Freire and Horton - We Make the Road by Walking - Conversations on Education and Social Change

Edited by Brenda Bell. John Gaventa. and John Peters

Myles Horton and Paulo Freire

We Make the Road by Walking

Conversations

on Education and

Social Change

Temple University Press

Philadelphia

Temple University Press, Philadelphia 19122

Copyright © 1990 by Highlander Research and

Education Cemer All rights reserved

Published 1990 Primed in the United

States of America T he paper used in this

publication meets the minimum requirements

of American National Standard for Information

Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Primed

Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984 @)

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Horton, Miles, 1905 We make the road by

walking: conversations on education and social

change I Myles Horton and Paulo Freire; edited

by Brenda Bell,John Gavema, and John Peters.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references.

ISB N 0-87722-771-3 I. Education - Philosophy.

2. Social change ..

3. Freire, Paulo, 1921.Views on social action.

4. Horton, Myles, 1905.Views on social action.

5. Adult education - Social aspects - United States.

6. Education - Social aspects - Brazil.

7. Highlander Folk School (Monteagle, Tenn.)

I. Bell, Brenda. II. Gaventa, John, 1949·

III. Peters, John Marshall, 1941. IV. T itle.

LB885·H64W4 1990 374-dc2o 90-36005

Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

Vll

Xlll

xv

Preface

Acknowledgments

Editors' Introduction

Introduction 3 "We make the road by walking"

Formative Years 9 "I was always getting in trouble for reading

in school"

24 "Reading has to be a loving event"

38 "I couldn't use all this book learning"

55 "I always am in the beginning, as you"

67 "Pockets of hope": Literacy and citizenship

Ideas 97 "Without practice there's no knowledge"

102 "Is it possible just to teach biology?"

109 "I've always been ambivalent about

charismatic leaders"

1 1 5 "The difference between education and

orgamzmg"

128 "My expertise is in knowing not to be an

expert"

13 1 "My respect for the soul of the culture"

138 "I learned a lot from being a father"

CHAPTER 4 Educational Practice 145 "The more the people become themselves,

the better the democracy"

163 "Highlander is a weaving of many colors"

180 "Conflicts are the midwife of conciousness"

CHAPTER 5 Education and Social Change 199 "You have to bootleg education"

2 15 "The people begin to get their history

into their hands, and then the role

of education changes"

CHAPTER 6 Reflections 2 27 "Peaks and valleys and hills and hollers"

239 "It's necessary to laugh with the people"

248 Epilogue

25 1 Index

Preface

Myles Horton and Paulo Freire knew about each other

more than twenty years ago. Paulo read part of the

growing literature about Myles and Highlander, and

Myles read Paulo's early works. Both men explained to

their admirers how their ideas were similar and how

they were different. The two actually talked with each

other for the first time in 1973 , when asked to partici

pate in an adult education conference held in Chicago.

They met again in similar circumstances in New York

and California and at a conference in Nicaragua. But

these meetings were for other people and other occa

sions, affording Myles and Paulo little opportunity to

confirm what each had grown to believe about the other

man and his ideas. However, when they met at a con

ference in California in the summer of 19B7, the time

had come for them to talk, to explore ideas, to get to

Vll

Preface

know one another-really know each other. It was also

time to let the world in on what each man, whose work

was already well known, had to say to each other.

Paulo came to Los Angeles to participate in a con

ference in honor of his late wife, Elza. Myles was visiting

his daughter there and was convalescing following an

operation for colon cancer. Paulo asked him to consider

"speaking a book." Paulo, as people famil iar with his

writings know, had used this method to get his own

ideas into print. Myles , not known for publishing his

own ideas, characteristically let go a hearty laugh , per

haps because he saw the irony of the situation , but more

l ikely because he immediately felt the joy that such an

experience would bring to both men. Others around

them, including Sue Thrasher of Highlander, saw the

historical possibilities , and went to work to bring the

idea to fruition.

Brenda Bell knew of John Peters's interest in bring

ing Paulo to the University of Tennessee as a visit

ing scholar, and through Brenda he learned about

Sue's desire to bring Paulo to Highlander. With the

help of our colleagues at the university and at High

lander, financial arrangements were made, tentative

travel plans and a schedule were laid on, and anticipa

tion began to build .

Soon a small group of Highlander and university

staff members began to meet and plan a week of events

that would center around conversations between Paulo

and Myles. The group planned symposia and classes at

the university for students and faculty, and two meet-

Vlll

Preface

ings at Highlander for community activists and other

friends of Highlander. Public demand for time with

Paulo and Myles was great, but the planners managed

to keep the main event intact , and the conversations

began.

The clear, cool days in early December 19B7 were

generous to the mountains around Highlander, allow

ing participants to converse on the idyll ic Highlander

hilltop where Myles lived. Paulo particularly enjoyed

occasionally gazing through the expansive window to

the long, wide view beyond Myles's hearth. They could

relax, explore their histories, and feel the texture and

depth of each other's experiences as they grew closer

as good friends. Their conversations soon became like

a dance between old companions accustomed to the

subtle leads and responses by one, then the other.

Members of the Highlander staff and friends occa

sionally participated in the conversation, tugging on

the dialogue, sometimes clarifying a difference in ideas,

sometimes netting an elusive thought in need of illustra

tion, but never breaking the rhythm of the conversation.

Myles, Paulo, and the "third party " conversationalists

were recorded on audio tape, the tape was transcribed

verbatim, and the long editing process began.

As editors , we have worked to give the conversations

some structure and have presented them in a series

of chapters that are very close to the order in which

the themes emerged in the conversations. However, we

tried to preserve the subtlety of each man's critique of

the other's ideas, the immediacy of their dialogue, the

IX

Preface

occasional discontinuities in conversational themes, the

spontaneity of their remarks, and the cognitive leaps re

vealed in their conversations. We wanted others to feel

a part of this remarkable conversation, as we did when

we read the transcripts, and to experience what Paulo

frequently referred to as the "sensualism of reading,

full of feelings, of emotions, of tastes."

The book is divided into six chapters , containing

sections of conversation that focus on distinct topics.

Each section is headed by a quote from the text, chosen

by the editors to represent what follows and to retain

the lyrical quality of the conversation itself. The book

is perhaps best read as a series of conversations rather

than a tightly structured whole.

The "Introduction" contains a discussion between

Myles and Paulo about why they decided to speak a

book and how they should go about it, setting the tone

for several days of dialogue that followed. "Formative

Years" is about their youth , their families, their cultural

settings, and some of their early experiences , such as

Myles's work in the Citizenship Schools. This chapter

highlights the connection between the men's biogra

phies and the nature of their experiences and practice.

The next chapter is about their ideas , many of which

have been shared by Myles and Paulo in other places.

For example, they consider whether education can be

neutral , how the concept of authority fits into their

thinking and practice, their view of charismatic leader

ship, and what they see as differences between educat

ing and organizing. This chapter is richly spiced with

stories and anecdotes. Many have been told before, but

x

Preface

never as they unfold here in the interaction of the two

storytellers.

[n "Educational Practice ," Myles and Paulo discuss

specific features of their work in communities, work

shops, and classrooms in a variety of cultural settings.

They describe the role of the educator, intervention in

the learning experiences of others, and the relationship

of theory and practice in the context of adult learning.

Again , this chapter is amply illustrated with stories and

examples, most expressing common ground in the two

men's experiences.

"Education and Social Change" is at once abstract

and filled with concrete examples of the struggles of

both men to change systems. Perhaps the clearest di

vergence of their views is illustrated here, when Paulo

and Myles discuss the pros and cons of working from

inside systems as opposed to effecting change from out

side. Examples from Latin America and from North

America illustrate the differences in cultural contexts

that help account for their different thoughts and strate

gies.

The final chapter, "Reflections," is a look back to

the people, literature, and events that influenced their

thinking and their work. It includes a sweeping dis

cussion of broader ideas and worldly matters. This

chapter also captures much of what is brill iantly simple

about the two men's thinking and how that thinking was

shaped by more than one hundred years of combined

educational practice.

Two years after the conversations took place , Myles

and Paulo were reunited at Highlander, where Paulo

Xl

came to review the manuscript draft and. sadly. to see

Myles for the last time. Three days later Myles slipped

into a coma. He died January 19. 1990. At their final

meeting. Paulo and Myles were pleased that they had

made this road together.

THE EDITORS

Acknowledgments

Preparations for the conversations and the development

of this book was truly a group effort . Sue Thrasher, staff

member at Highlander, did much of the early logistical

work to get it all under way. Vickie Creed and Candie

Carawan of the Highlander staff organized events at

Highlander and worked with University of Tennessee

staff in arranging events on campus. Sue Thrasher,

John Gaventa, Helen Lewis, Vicki Creed, Linda Martin,

Thorsten Horton, Mario Acevedo, and Candie Cara

wan all participated as third parties during the con

versations between Myles and Paulo. Mike Lemonds

assisted in the first stage of manuscript editing, and

Becky Allen, Herb Kohl , and Colin Greer read early

versions of the manuscript and gave their very help

ful reactions. Wanda Chasteen, and Janie Bean labori

ously typed transcripts from audio recordings. Mary

Xlll

Acknowledgments

Nickell contributed considerable secretarial time dur

ing events leading to the conversations. Karen Jones

and Loretta McHan provided secretarial assistance in

the editing process . A number of community activists

and friends of Highlander participated in a day-long

workshop that helped stimulate parts of the conversa

tions. Many other staff members and friends of High

lander shared their time and energies at different stages

of the project, as did our own families and friends.

Finally, most of the expenses �ssociated with the activi

ties and the manuscript preparation were paid by the

University of Tennessee, the Board of Homeland Min

istries of the United Church of Christ , and by the Myles

and Zilphia Horton Fund of the Highlander Research

and Education Center (to which all royalties from this

book are being donated) . On behalf of all people who

will be touched by these conversations between Myles

and Paulo, we deeply appreciate what those mentioned

here contributed.

THE EDITORS

xiv


Myles Horton

and Paulo Freire:

Background

on the Men,

the Movements,

and the Meetings

[n December 1987, Myles Horton and Paulo Freire, two

pioneers of education for social change, came together

to "talk a book" about their experiences and ideas.

Though they came from different environments-one

from the rural mountains of Appalachia, the other from

Sao Paulo, the largest industrial city in Brazil-Myles

and Paulo shared a vision and a history of using par

ticipatory education as a crucible for empowerment of

the poor and powerless. Their remarkably common ex

periences represent more than one hundred years of

educational praxis.

In many ways , Myles and Paulo seem an unlikely

match. They began their work at different times. Hor

ton started the Highlander Folk School on the Cumber

land Plateau in Tennessee in 1932. Paulo began his

l iteracy programs in Recife in northeastern Brazil some

xv

Editors'lntroduction

twenty-five years later. Paulo has always been more

theoretical in his writing and discourse . Myles con

versed more simply, often through anecdotes and story

tel ling drawn from his years of struggle. Paulo's work,

at least initially, came from a position within a univer

sity. He continued it as a government official respon

sible for l iteracy programs throughout Brazil. Myles

always worked outside university and government insti

tutions, using as his base the Highlander Folk School

(later the Highlander Research and Education Cen

ter) , an independent center conducting adult educa

tion programs at the grass roots . Partly as a result of

political circumstance-he was forced to flee from Bra

zil in 1 964-Paulo has worked in many countries and

is a more global figure . Myles too has faced political

repercussions-especially the attacks, beatings, and in

vestigations during the McCarthy era and civil rights

movement-but chos,: (and was able) to stay rooted in

one region of the southern United States for more than

five decades .

One of the reasons that Paulo Freire wanted to "talk

a book" with Myles, he often said , was that he was tired

of North American audiences tell ing him that his ideas

were only applicable to Third World conditions . "No,"

he said , "the story of Myles and of Highlander Center

show that the ideas apply to the First World , too."

How could two men, working in such different social

spaces and times, arrive at similar ideas and meth

ods? Underlying the philosophy of both is the idea that

knowledge grows from and is a reflection of social ex

perience. It is important, therefore, that these conver-

XVI


sations and the ideas of these two men also be linked to

the social context from which they grew. Perhaps more

important than their First World or Third World roots

is the fact that both Myles and Paulo came from the

poorest regions within their own countries, regions that

shared many characteristics in their relationships to the

larger political economy. Within that context, they also

shared similarities of life history and of involvement in

social movements that helped to shape their vision and

their practice .

The Men

Myles Horton was born in 1905 in the western Ten

nessee Delta, an area whose history is based upon

plantation agriculture, a s lave-based economy, absentee

ownership, and severe rural poverty. He founded the

Highlander Folk School in Grundy County, Tennes

see, one of the poorest Appalachian counties and an

area dominated by powerful coal interests . During the

1 930s, a� �he time of Highlander's founding, the region

was being swept by industrialization. Myles and High

lander started their programs with rural workers, who

were being displaced from the land and driven into the

textile mills, mines , and factories as part of the "devel

opment" of the rural South .

Paulo Freire was born in 1 921 in Recife, in northeast

Brazil , one of Brazil's poorest regions. As Appalachia

and the rural South have been in the United States,

the region has been plagued with "poverty, hunger and

illiteracy for many years . . . . The northeast has Brazil's

XVII


highest birthrate, shortest life expectancy rates , sever

est malnutrition, lowest literacy rates , and highest levels

of unemployment and underemployment." I There are

other common characteristics between the two regions.

The rural areas of northeast Brazil were dominated by

sugar estates and slave and peasant labor, not dissimilar

to the cotton plantation economy of the South. Indus

trialization and "development" schemes transformed

the rural-based economy, leading peasants to migrate

from the countryside to the towns and cities such as

Recife. Both regions were dependent upon powerful

economic interests. initially the plantation owners and

later the multinationals, and were characterized by

sharp dichotomies between rich and poor, powerful

and powerless .

Myles and Paulo also experienced rather similar

family backgrounds. Both were born of parents who

were slightly more educated and well-to-do than many

of the poor around them. But in both families, the

broader economi<; changes were to lead to personal

adversity.

Myles's father and mother, who had been through

grammar school, were schoolteachers. They later lost

their jobs when teachers were required to have certi

fication. Myles's father survived as he could, spending

time as a day laborer, a clerk, and then a sharecropper.

Myles recalls : "I can remember very well that I never

felt sorry for myself. I just accepted the fact that those

were the conditions, and that I was a victim of those

conditions, but I never had a feeling of inferiority to

xviii

Editors'Introduction

people. I think that I got that from my parents too,

because even though they were struggling and poor,

they never accepted the fact that they were inferior to

anybody or that anybody was inferior to them."

Paulo's father was a low-level officer in the military

where "pay was low, but the prestige was high." 2 During

the Depression, his father lost that job, as Myles's father

had lost his, and the family left Recife for the nearby

town of Jabotao. There, Paulo says , "I had the possi

bility to experience hunger. And I say I had the pos

sibility because I think that experience was very useful

to me."

Though Myles's and Paulo's parents were constantly

on the edge of poverty, struggling to make ends meet ,

they were strongly supportive of schooling for their

children. Paulo recalls his father teaching him to read

"under a mango tree," while Myles describes loving

books and reading anything that he could borrow from

neighbors, friends, and relatives in the nearest little

town, named, coincidentally, Brazil ! Through family

friends or other contacts, both sets of parents were able

to send their sons to nearby towns for high school when

they were 1 5 or 1 6 years old . Conforming to the school

ing system was not easy for either boy, even at a young

age . As a child , Paulo was thought to have learning

problems, leading his teachers to label him as having

a "mild mental retardation."3 Myles describes how he

hated to do the rote work that was required and instead

would sneakily read other books, leading him to "get in

trouble for reading in school ."

XIX


Unlike many of their friends from similar circum

stances, both Myles and Paulo attended college, Myles

in a small Tennessee school called Cumberland Pres

byterian , Paulo in the University of Recife, where he

was trained as a lawyer, a profession he quickly gave

up. Both were drawn to the social aspects of Chris

tianity, among other early intellectual influences. Myles

went on from college to Union Seminary in the late

1920S, where he was influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr,

the Christian socialist and social critic . He also went on

to study sociology briefly at the University of Chicago,

where he worked with Jane Addams in the Settlement

House movement.

Freire , too, was highly influenced by a growing

Catholic Action movement , which was to lay the ground

for what would later become known as the liberation

theology movement . As a student, he joined a Catho

l ic Action group at the university, which , unlike most

of the church, was "more preoccupied with the concept

of society and social change, and acutely aware of the

conditions of poverty and hunger in the Northeast ."4

While Myles moved away from his theological roots,

Freire continued to be active in and deeply influenced

by the radical Catholic movement.5

Myles and Paulo were shaped as well by their own

families and personal relationships, especially their

wives. In 1935 Myles married Zilphia Mae Johnson,

a talented musician and singer, who contributed to

Highlander and Myles an understanding of the role

that music and culture could play in nurturing social

xx


change .6 In 1943 , Paulo married Elza Maria Costa de

Oliveira, whom he credits for constantly helping him

develop his educational ideas and method. Myles suf

fered personal tragedy when Zilphia died in 1 956. Elza

died in 1987, before Paulo visited Highlander to hold

these conversations. Both Myles and Paulo remarried:

Myles to Aimee Isgrig, who worked on the staff with

Myles and wrote a dissertation on Highlander;7 Paulo

to Anna Maria Araujo, one of his students who wrote

her dissertation with him on the history of illiteracy in

Brazi1.8

While Myles and Paulo shared these commonalities

in family background, they chose very different paths

to begin their educational work.

After leaving graduate school in sociology at the

University of Chicago, Myles went to Denmark to study

the Danish Folk High School movement, hoping to

gain insights for his own fledgling idea of a commu

nity school in the United States. There he learned more

about the ideas of Bishop Grundtvig, founder of the

movement-ideas such as the importance of peer learn

ing in non formal settings free from government regula

tion . In Copenhagen on Christmas night 1 93 1 , he wrote

of his dream of beginning a school in the mountains of

Tennessee :

I can't sleep, but there are dreams. What you must do is go

back, get a simple place, move in and you are there. The situa

tion is there. You start with this and you let it grow. You know

your goal. It will build its own structure and take its own form.

XXI


You can go to school all your life, you'll never figure it out

because you are trying to get an answer that can only come

from the people in the life situation.9

With this vision in mind, he returned to Tennessee

in 1932 , and along with Don West started the High

lander Folk School. Though he took short stints away

from Highlander to develop educational programs for

unions, Myles was to serve as director of Highlander

the next forty years , until he retired in 1972 .

After abandoning law, Paulo Freire began work in

1946 at a social service agency for the state of Pernam

buco. He was responsible for programs of education

for the rural poor and industrial workers in the area

that included Recife. Here he first became interested in

the problems of adult literacy and popular education,

and he began to read and develop his ideas . In 1954

he resigned this post and began teaching history and

philosophy of education at the University of Recife . In

1 959, with the election of a new, progressive mayor in

Recife, Freire was placed in charge of the Movimento

de Cultura Popular (MCP), an active adult-education

program. (At the same time, he obtained his doctorate

from the University of Recife, where in his thesis he

outl ined his emerging adult-education ideas .) In 1962 ,

he was named head of a new cultural extension service

established for popular education in the region . And

following a change in national government and a vic

tory by J03.0 Goulart , Freire, whose methods were by

now becoming well-known, was asked in 1963 to head

the National Literacy Program of the Brazilian Minis-

XXIl


try of Education and Culture-the post that was to lead

to his exile in 1964.

The Movements

Thus, Myles's and Paulo's ideas were to develop through

two very different forms of praxis-Myles's from a

small , independent residential education center situ

ated outside the formal schooling system or the state,

Paulo from within university and state-sponsored pro

grams. Their ideas were to converge not through a

series of theoretical deductions but through their inter

action with the social context and their involvement

with broader popular struggles for participation and

freedom. Though both are often credited for what they

contributed to these movements, perhaps more signifi

cant is the way in which their careers were in fact shaped

by social movements themselves.

When Myles and others founded Highlander on

the Cumberland Plateau in 193 2 , they had a vision of

change but no clear idea of the movement that was

to bring it about . Their intent was simply "to provide

an educational center in the South for the training of

rural and industrial leaders, and for the conservation

and enrichment of the indigenous cultural values of the

mountains." \0 The school's first fund-raising letter, sent

by Reinhold Niebuhr, stated that the school proposed

"to use education as one of the instruments for bring

ing about a new social order." II The seeds of the idea

settled on the fertile soil of industrial ization that was

XXlll


sweeping the rural South , bringing with it the demands

for economic justice for southern workers . Highlander

staff members quickly provided assistance to workers

and used these experiences to shape their educational

ideas. During one strike, following meetings with coal

miners in Wilder, Tennessee, Myles was arrested by the

National Guard and charged with "coming here, get

ting information, going back and teaching it." 12 By the

1 940S Highlander had become a residential education

center for the Congress for Industrial Organizations

(CIO), providing schools for union leaders from around

the South.

In the early 1 950s, feel ing that racial justice must

accompany economic justice, Highlander shifted its at

tention to the problem of desegregation in the South .

For the next decade it was a meeting and educational

ground for the emerging civil rights movement. Dozens

of meetings and workshops at Highlander were fol

lowed by civil rights activities that were to make major

changes in race relations in the United States. Rosa

Parks, who had been to Highlander only a few months

before, sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott when she

refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. The

boycott in turn gave rise to the leadership of Martin

Luther King, Jr. , also a visitor to Highlander and a

colleague of Horton's.

In the early days of the civil rights movement, one of

Highlander's 'most influential programs was the devel

opment of Citizenship Schools. Begun in Johns Island,

South Carolina, in response to a request from EsauJen

kins, a black community leader, the Citizenship Schools

XXIV


taught blacks how to read and write in order to gain the

vote and political power. In so doing, they also devel

oped principles of literacy education that used popu

lar black leaders as teachers and taught reading based

on the students' needs and desires to gain freedom.

In the 1 960s , leadership of the highly successful pro

gram was passed to the Southern Christian Leadership

Conference (SCLC). By 1 970 SCLC estimated that ap

proximately one hundred thousand blacks had learned

to read and write through the Citizenship Schools.13

In his book , The Origins of the Civil Rights Move

ment, Aldon Morris traces this link between the Citi

zenship Schools and the mobil ization of the civil rights

movement. He argues that "the citizenship schools were

probably the most profound contribution of all those

made to the emerging civil rights movement" by "move

ment halfway houses" such as Highlander.I4 (The Citi

zenship Schools are discussed extensively by Horton

and Freire in Chapter 2 of this book.)

Freire's ideas found a similar base in the movements

for democratic education in northeast Brazil. During

the growth of these movements in the late 1 950s, the

traditional social structure was changing, the depen

dence on the sugar plantation economy was declining,

and industrialization was occurring at a rapid rate. With

the emergence of a popul ist reformist government of

Pernambuco, the Northeast of Brazil became a labo

ratory for the emergence of new demands for partici

pation by the people in their own development . Two

movements in particular formed the setting for the lit

eracy and popular education program of which Freire

xxv


was a part. One was the growth of rural trade unions

or peasant associations known as Peasant Leagues. By

1960 an estimated eighty thousand workers belonged to

these leagues in the Northeast. Among their demands,

in addition to the right to organize cooperatives for a

program of land reform, was the right for illiterates to

vote, a right that was denied to the peasants at the time.

The second movement grew from Catholic activists and

included the Basic Education Movement, or MEB (Movi

mento Educadio de Base), and radical Catholic groups

such as Popular Action and Catholic University Youth

(to which Freire had belonged).

In 1959 Miguel Arraes, a nationalist and radical

democrat, was elected mayor of Recife. Hoping to bring

about fundamental changes in the constitution, he knew

that he would have to bring education to the rural poor,

who represented a majority of the population but could

not vote because they were largely illiterate. He formed

the Recife Popular Culture Movement, or MCP (Movi

mento Cultural Popular) , which would carry out a pro

gram of grassroots education, adult literacy, and devel

opment of critical consciousness of the masses . Doing

so would help to mobilize the peasants to exercise their

political power, and Freire was asked to head this pro

gram. Here he developed culture centers and culture

circles that were at the heart of the literacy education

process. Recife and the surrounding area thus became

the microcosm for the development of Freire's ideas,

ideas that were deeply related to the popular demands

and political movements of the time.

The period was one of great awakening and change

xxvi


throughout the country. "Different forces were in mo

tion and the process was an irreversible one. It was the

breaking of an old society and the emergence of a more

democratic, pluralistic social order." 15 With the elec

tion of a new populist national government in 1960,

a variety of popular education and culture programs

were initiated. Freire was appointed head of the new

National Literacy Program. Under the National Liter

acy Plan of 1964, his methods were to be extended to

reach 5 million illiterate people throughout the coun

try. The MEB, the Catholic Church's own national adult

education organization, also adopted Freire's methods.

The plans were not fully realized. In 1964 a military

coup overthrew the Goulart government. The National

Literacy Campaign was halted. The government en

acted new laws, "which deprived one hundred influen

tial members of the previous government their rights

for a decade." 16 Among them was Paulo Freire , who

was forced to flee the country along with hundreds of

other activists and leaders in the government.

For both Freire and Horton, the linking of liter

acy and enfranchisement posed a major threat to long

entrenched power structures, a threat that led to reper

cussions. As Freire has pointed out:

It was so extraordinary, that it couldn't be allowed to continue.

In a state like Pernambuco, which at the time had about 800

thousand voters, it would be possible in one year to have up

to 1 million and 300 thousand new voters .... Well, that had

too great a repercussion on the prevalent power structure. It

was too risky a game for the dominant class'"

XXVII


In Brazil, the Rio de Janeiro newspaper El Globo ac

cused Freire of "spreading foreign ideas throughout the

country." 18 Freire was arrested , jailed for seventy-five

days and interrogated for eighty-three hours . The mili

tary government declared him an "international sub

versive, a traitor to Christ and to the people of Brazil

besides being an absolute ignoramus and illiterate." 19

Similarly, as Highlander emerged as a key force

in the empowerment of blacks in the South, it came

under attack. The southern white power structure at

tempted to use the virulent anticommunist rhetoric

of the McCarthy period to discredit Horton and the

school. In 1954, Horton was investigated by Senator

James Eastland, a wealthy Mississippi planter and white

supremacist, for his alleged communist connections.

In another celebrated incident, Georgia's segregation

ist governor, Marvin Griffin, dispatched infiltrators to

the celebration of Highlander's twenty-fifth anniver

sary in 1957 , where Martin Luther King, Jr. , was the

keynote speaker. Pictures were taken of King, Hor

ton, and others, turned into billboards, and plastered

around the South with the label, "King at a Communist

Training School." In 1959 the Highlander Folk School

was raided by the State of Tennessee and its property

and assets seized .20 Arguing that you could padlock the

school but not the idea, Horton renamed it the High

lander Research and Education Center and moved it to

Knoxville-and later to New Market , where it is today.

Despite the adversity, both men displayed the opti

mism that underlies much of their educational beliefs .

The attacks, while imposing great personal costs, be-

XXVlll


came learning grounds for further activities . After a

brief stint in Bol ivia (until another coup) , Freire went

on to Chile, where he assisted in developing educational

programs on behalf of agrarian reform. From there

he went to Harvard , where he wrote and lectured. His

ideas began to receive much more international atten

tion, especially following the publication of Pedagogy of

the Oppressed in English in 1 975.21 In 1 970, he joined the

World Council of Churches in Geneva. He continued to

travel , assist in the development of programs, and write

until he was able to return to Brazil in 1980 .

As the North American civil rights movement began

to grow in the mid-1960s, the Citizenship Schools be

came incorporated under the Southern Christian Lead

ership Conference. Myles tried to continue developing

educational programs in other parts of Appalachia and

the South . Later, passing on leadership of the High

lander Research and Education Center to younger asso

ciates , he focused on traveling, speaking, and conduct

ing workshops in the United States and abroad. Today,

the center continues its work throughout Appalachia

and the South. While issues have changed-today they

include environmental abuse, poverty and economic

justice, youth empowerment, leadership development

-the philosophy of education for empowerment re

mains.

The Meetings

Given their backgrounds, it was perhaps inevitable that

Horton and Freire would meet. When they did come

XXIX


together in Myles's home at Highlander, it was an im

portant time for both. Earlier in the year Paulo's wife ,

Elza, had died, and Paulo was still in a state of sorrow

and depression. Myles had recovered from an opera

tion for colon cancer in the summer, and though he was

doing well , he was clearly concerned about how to share

his ideas while he was able.

In this book, the two men link their own lives, their

ideas on radical education, and their experiences in a

fresh way. After reading the edited manuscript, Paulo

would say that of all the themes that he and Myles dis

cussed, two underlying ideas are the most important.

First is the fundamental belief in the importance of the

freedom of people everywhere, the struggle for which

is widely seen as the 1990S open-in Brazil, in East

ern Europe, in the Soviet Union, in southern Africa.

Second is the radical democratic belief in the capacity

and right of all people to achieve that freedom through

self-emancipation.

Both men believe, then, real liberation is achieved

through popular participation. Participation in turn is

realized through an educational practice that i tself is

both liberatory and participatory, that simultaneously

creates a new society and involves the people themselves

in the creation of their own knowledge.

Most important for Myles and Paulo, these ideas

are not abstractions, but grow from their struggles to

link theory and practice in their own lives. In turn,

their discussions illuminate questions faced by educa

tors and activists around the world who are concerned

xxx


with l inking participatory education to l iberation and

social change. What is the role of the teacher? The

organizer? The educator? How is education linked to

mobil ization and culture to create a new society? Can

society be transformed by education, or must education

itself first be transformed? Is there space for liberatory

education within the state-sponsored educational sys

tem, as Paulo tried to show, or must change come from

somewhere outside, such as Myles's Highlander?

In dealing with these themes, the conversations give

us, as Henry Giroux has said of Freire, both a "language

of critique" of existing power relations and a "language

of possibility" for creating a new society through a new

educational and social practice.22

The process of "talking a book" became for the two

men intensely personal. They not only deepened their

critique of knowledge and power but also developed

and renewed their own strength. Over the course of

their conversations, they shared a respect and personal

affection for one another in a way that gave each a new

sense of possibility and hope.

Paulo credits his reflections with Myles as helping

to bring him out of his despair over Elza's death. In

h is meeting with Myles in December 1987 , he saw in

Myles a man sixteen years his senior-then 82 years

old-still full of energy and vision. He says, "At High

lander I began to read and to write again." He also was

drawn back into the struggles for popular participa

tion in Brazil . When a popular socialist candidate was

elected mayor of Sao Paulo in Ig88, Paulo became Sec-

XXXI


retary for Education and took up the new challenge of

transforming a traditional educational system in Latin

America's largest and most industrialized city.

In the winter of 1989, in the first popular elections in

twenty-nine years, Paulo supported Luis Inacio Lula da

Silva, known as Lula, a trade unionist for the Workers

Party (PT), who carne very close to winning the national

elections. Had he done so, it would have been a new his

torical moment in Brazilian politics, and Paulo Freire

would again have been named Mir.ister of Education

for the whole country, the post he t>eld when he was

exiled in 1964. "Tell Myles that I may not be able to see

him in January," Freire told us as we tried to arrange

the final meeting. "Tell him that I may be in power."

"That," Horton allowed, "would be a reasonable ex-

cuse."

Lula carne very close to winning the election, but not

close enough. In early January 1990, following Lula's

defeat , Paulo and Anita, his second wife, carne to High

lander for a final review of the manuscript and, it would

turn out, a final meeting with Myles . In the fall of 1 989,

Myles had undergone surgery for a tumor in the brain,

two years after his initial bout with colon cancer. As his

mental and physical strength slipped away, he focused

on rereading the edited transcript and on the possi

bility of another meeting with Freire for final changes .

By this second meeting, another tumor had formed in

Myles's brain, and he worried about being alert enough

to discuss the manuscript with Paulo. He rall ied for

the meeting. The two men were able to have several

brief conversations, to concur that the manuscript was

XXXll


almost ready, and to express their pleasure with it. As

they talked and ate together in Myles's home, the atmo

sphere was one of intense emotion. Looking out over

the mountains and at the birds at the feeder, Paulo

would comment : "It is sad, but dying is a necessary part

of living. I t is wonderful that Myles may die here. Dying

here is dying in the midst of life."

Three days after his last visit with Paulo and Anita,

Myles Horton slipped into a coma. He died a week later.

He was 84 years old . "It is incredible," said Paulo, "that

at the morr.�nt that Myles dies, I assume the responsi

bility of leading the public system of education in Sao

Paulo. . . . It was an honor for me to participate with

him. He's an incredible man. The history of this man,

his individual presence in the world , is something which

justifies the world." Were he able, Myles, we are sure,

would say the· same of Paulo.

NOT E S

Carroll L . Wessinger, Parallel Characteristics: Northeast Bra

zil/Appalachia (Philadelphia: Lutheran Church of America,

n.d.),6.

2 Jorge Jeria, "Vagabond of the Obvious: A Bibliography of

Paulo Freire," Vitae Scholasticae: The Bulletin of Educational

Biography 5, nos. 1-2 (1986): 4.

3 Jeria, "Vagabond," 9, quoting "Background on Paulo Freire,"

Convergence 6, no. 1 (1973): 46.

4 Jeria, "Vagabond," 13.

5 Emanuel de Kadt, Catholic Radicals in Brazil (London: Oxford

University Press, 1970), 102-5.

xxxiii


6 Zilphia Horton is often credited with helping to record and

adapt the song "We Shall Overcome," which was brought to

Highlander by a group of tobacco workers in the late 1940S

and was later spread to the civil rights movement by Guy

Carawan, Pete Seeger, and others.

7 The dissertation has been published as Aimee Isgrig Horton,

The Highlander Folk School: A History of Its Major Programs,

I932-I96I (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson, 1989).

8 Anna Maria Araujo, Analfabetismo No Brasil (Sao Paulo: INEP,

1989).

9 Quoted by john M. Peters and Brenda Bell, "Horton of High

lander," in Peter jarvis, ed., Twentieth Century Thinkers in Adult

Education (London: Croom Helm, 1987),243.

10 Quoted in Peters and Bell, "Horton of Highlander," 250.

11 Ibid.

12 See Frank Adams, "Highlander Folk School: Getting Infor

mation, Going Back and Teaching It," Harvard Education Re

view 42, nO·4 (1972): 497-520.

13 Bell and Peters, "Horton of Highlander," citing Adams,

"Highlander Folk School."

14 Aldon D. Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black

Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press,

1984), 149·

15 jeria, "Vagabond," 33.

16 Ibid., 45.

17 "Paulo Freire no exilioficou mais brasileiro ainda," Pasquim

(Rio de janeiro), nO.462 (5 and 11 May 1978), quoted in

Vivian Von Schelling, "Culture and Underdevelopment in

Brazil with Particular Reference to Mario de Andrade and

Paulo Freire" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sussex, 1984), 265.

18 jeria, "Vagabond," 44, quoting accounts of T. Skidmore, The

XXXIV


Politics of Brazil, 1930-1964 (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1967),406.

19 Jeria, "Vagabond," 48, quoting accounts of Marcio Moreira, A

Grain of Mustard Seed: The Awakening of the Brazilian Revolution

(New York: Anchor, 1973), 115·

20 There are many accounts of these attacks on Highlander. See

especially John M. Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School 1932-

1962, (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988).

2 1 Available in a number of editions and languages, the book has

sold over two hundred thousand copies.

22 Henry A. Giroux, "Introduction," in Paulo Freire, The Poli

tics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (South Hadley,

Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1985).

S E L E C T E D BIBLIOG R APHY

PAULO FREIRE

Freire, Paulo. Cultural Action for Freedom. Harmondsworth, Eng.:

Penguin, 1972.

--- . Education as the Practice of Liberty. New York: McGraw Hill,

1973·

---. Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Continuum,

1981.

--- . Education: The Practice of Liberty. London: Writers and

Readers Publishing, 1976. (Originally published in the U.K.

as Education for Critical Consciousness.)

---. Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea Bissau. Translated

by Carmen St . John Hunter. New York: Seabury Press, 1978.

--- . Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 1970.

---. The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation. South

Hadley, Mass.: Bergin & Garvey, 1985.

xxxv


Freire. Paulo. with Donald Macedo. Literacy: Reading the Word and

the World. South Hadley. Mass.: Bergin & Garvey. 1987.

Grabowski. K. Paulo Freire: A Revolutionary Dilemma for the Adult

Educator. Syracuse. N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. 1972.

Jeria. Jorge. "Vagabond of the Obvious: A Bibliography of Paulo

Freire." Vitae Scholasticae 5. nos. 1-2 (1986): 1-75'

Mackie. Robert. Literacy and Revolution: The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire.

New York: Continuum. 1981. Also published by Pluto Press.

London.

Short Ira. A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Educa

tion. South Hadley. Mass.: Bergin & Garvey. 1987.

M Y L E S H O R TON

Adams. Frank. "Highlander Folk School: Getting Information.

Going Back and Teaching It." Harvard Educational Review 42.

no. 4 (1972): 497-520.

Adams. Frank. with Myles Horton. Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The Idea

of Highlander. Winston-Salem. N.C.: John F. Blair. 1975.

Clark. Septima. with Cynthia Brown. ed. Ready from W ithin: 'Sep

tima Clark and the Civil Rights Movement. Navarro. Calif.: Wild

Tree. 1986.

Glen. John M. Highlander: No Ordinary School. 1932-1962. Lexing

ton: University Press of Kentucky. 1988.

Horton. Aimee Isgrig. The Highlander Folk School: A History of its

Major Programs, 1932-1961. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson, 1989.

Horton, Myles. "Influences on Highlander Research and Education

Center." Pp. 17-31 in Det Danske Selskab, Grundtvig's Ideas

in North America-Influences and Parallels. Copenhagen: Det

Danske Selskab, 1983.

Horton, Myles, with Herbert and Judith Kohl. The Long Haul. New

York: Doubleday Books, 1990.

XXXVl


Horton, Myles, with Bill Moyers. "The Adventures of a Radical

Hillbilly." Bill Moyers' Journal. Originally broadcast on W NET,

New York,june 5, 1981.

Kennedy, William Bean. "Highlander Praxis: Learning with Myles

Horton." Teachers College Record (Fall 1981): 105-19.

Morris, Aldon D. Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Commu

nities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press, 1984.

Peters,john M. and Brenda Bell. "Horton of Highlander." In Peter

jarvis, ed., Twentieth Century Thinkers in Adult Education. Lon

don: Croom Helm, 1987.

Phenix, Lucy Massie (producer). You Got to Move: Stories of Change

in the South. New York: Icarus Films, 1985.

Tjerandsen, Carl. Education for Citizenship: A Foundation's Experience.

Santa Cruz, Calif.: Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation, 1980.

--- . "The Highlander Heritage: Education for Social Change."

Convergence 15, no. 6 ( 1983): 10-22.

XXXVII

WE MAKE THE R OA D BY WALKING

Calldie Carawall

C H A P TE R 1

Introduction

"We make the road by walking"

PAU LO : What is beautiful is how we look alike, Myles and I .

Here we are among friends, so I can say that . I can

talk about how I look like Myles-being Paulo Freire ,

a Brazilian with a different context-about the ways I

find myself in his thought and in our conversations in

this book.

In July 1987, when Myles and I met together in Los

Angeles at the symposium in memory of Elza Freire, I

had a dream; I thought it would be interesting to try

to speak a book with him. I �sked Myles to do this with

me, and he laughed ! But we agreed.

I t's as if I were starting everything now, talking with

Myles. This is the beginning of a different time in my

life . After Elza's death , after the death of my wife of

forty-two years, I am making a fantastic effort to con-

3

Introduction

tinue to be who I was before she died and also to be a

different person, because without her I discovered I am

no longer the first person . I t's not possible to be myself

without her. So necessarily I have to be different, but

you understand . . . . You see, I 'm trying to renew my

self, and talking with Myles, trying to "speak a book"

with him, is for me one of the most important dimen

sions of this second phase, or last time, of my life , which

I hope will be long!

M Y L E S : One reason that doing this with you is important

to me, Paulo, is that people will profit from our con

versation because they probably have the same kinds

of questions that we have for each other. This type of

conversation hasn't been possible before because even

though we've been together on a number of occasions,

the format is that others ask us questions . We never

have the chance to ask each other questions. This is a

good opportunity for us!

PAU L O : Let me tell you how I have worked in situations l ike

this. I started doing this with other friends of mine,

other educators , in Brazil , maybe five years ago. I called

it "spoken books." Instead of writing a book, we speak

the book, and afterwards others can transcribe it, but

first we have the order of the spoken words. This should

give us a dual ity in the conversation , a certain relax

ation , a result of losing seriousness in thinking while

talking. The purpose is to have a good conversation but

in the sort of style that makes it easier to read the words .

I n this book we can capture this movement of con

versation . The reader goes and comes with the move

ment of the conversation. I don't want to loose even one

4

Introduction

expression of Myles. Every time I don't understand, I

will ask Myles to stop, and one of you can tell me again,

but not in Myles's accent!

M Y L E S : Sometimes I 've seen you switch to Portuguese be

cause you can think better in Portuguese. I can think

better the way I talk, too.

PAU LO : Of course . You must do that because it is very good. I

would be speaking Portuguese also if you could under

stand. It's better for me. I don't want to lose anything

of your free expression.

MY L ES : I can do it my way, but you can't do it your way

because we don't have any facilities to translate .

PAU L O : Myles, I think we could start our conversation by say

ing something to each other about our very existence in

the world. We should not start, for example, speaking

about the objectives of education. Do you see that this is

not for me? You could speak a little bit about your l ife

and work, and I will say something about my life. Then

we could interact in some moments of the conversation,

as a starting point.

Afterward , I think we could begin to touch some

issues in general-education, popular education , poli

tics of education. This is how I am thinking about issues

in order to organize chapters as we do when we write.

Instead of that, we begin to create factual issues with

out localizing them in categories or pages , chapters .

A strong central phrase from the dialogue can help

readers begin to grasp some of the main issues of the

conversation. How do you react to this?

M Y L E S : I l ike the way you are outl ining our project. This is

the first time I 've understood what you had in mind .

5

Introduction

But I did know enough to say that it wouldn't work for

me to stick to topics or subjects . I wouldn't do it that way.

PAU LO : I t's very important for Brazilian readers to have in

formation about Myles. About me, they have already,

but about Myles they don't have and it's very, very im

portant .

M Y L E S : Yes, but the people in this country need the same

thing about you.

PAU LO : Same thing, yes , of course. I would say the younger

generations need to grab information while we're

around, because the lack of historical memory is fan

tastic. There is a generation in Brazil who knows me.

The next one, maybe no. And the next one will need a

new edition of the book.

M Y L E S : Well now, when we talk about this kind of back

ground, it's mainly the things that would help people

understand where I came from in terms of my ideas and

my thinking, what they are rooted in. Is that the idea?

PAU L O : Yes . Everything you recognize as something impor

tant. I think that even though we need to have some

outline, I am sure that we make the road by walking.* It has

to do with this house [Highlander] , with this experi

ence here. You're saying that in order to start, it should

be necessary to start .

M Y LE S : I 've never figured out any other way to start.

PAU LO : The question for me is how is it possible for us, in

* The phrase "we make the road by walking" is an adaptation of a prov

erb by the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, in which one line reads "se

hace camino al andar," or "you make the way as you go." See Antonio

M achado, Selected Poems, trans. Alan S. Trueblood (Cambridge : Har

vard University Press, 1 982) , 1 43 .

6

Introduction

the process of making the road , to be clear and to clar

ify our own making of the road . That is, then, to clarify

some theoretical issues about education in the big vision

of education. It's necessary. But I am not worried not

to have now the l ist of these issues because I think that

they will come out of the conversation.

MYLES : Not knowing what you had in mind, Paulo, I 've been

thinking about some of the things I 'd l ike not so much

to get into the book but to get out of this conversation

learning, just for my own enlightenment. And so I jot

ted down a lot of questions. I 'd like to get your reaction.

There will be a lot of questions in the back of my mind

as we go through this conversation . Where it seems ap

propriate, I will be wanting to get your reaction to some

of these things, how you deal with certain problems .

For example, you've had a lot more experience with the

academicians than I have. Then I 'd like to get your re

action to our citizenship schools . These are just things

that will be worked in as we go along. I ' l l take advantage

of this to get a lot of things into the discussion.

I see this thing as just unfolding as we go along. I

don't see any problem with that . I agree with Paulo; it's

a natural way of doing it . I t's what grows out of what

you do. Everything comes out of the past and goes be

yond. The conversation should be rooted and just keep

moving along. I think we'll run out of time before we

run out of ideas.

PAU LO : Yes . As we are talking, I am beginning to think, for

example, that maybe we could use even this first part

of the conversation, in which we ne talking about how

to speak the book�

7

Introduction

M Y L E S : I think what we've talked about here could be help

ful to people to know. A book shouldn't be a mystery.

It shouldn't be this business of separating books from

l ife instead of having them reflect life.

PAU L O : Here we are trying to decide how to get moments of

each other 's l ives and to bring them into a book, a book

which does not lose the essence of life . A dialogue is as

the life that comes from the earth's springs . It is as if

the book's life were doing that and being transformed

into words, written words through our speaking, and

afterward the speech comes into written speech, but it

loses some of the power of life.

M Y L E S : I agree that this spoken way of doing it for me is the

only way I can really do it. When I sit down to write

and think things out , it gets kind of lifeless. A creative

writer wouldn't have that problem, but I do. That's why

I welcome this idea.

8

C H A P T E R 2

Formative Years

"I was always getting in trouble for reading in school"

PAU L O : I would start this new moment of our experience by

asking you to say something about your life . How did

you come into this beautiful practice we have here at

Highlander? Tell us something about your life .

M Y L E S : Well I 've always kind of shied away from an auto

biography because I always thought of myself as work

ing much more closely with other people than doing an

individualistic sort of thing. I think people tend to look

for a kind of a self-portrait in an autobiography. I don't

find that so useful, reading about other people if they

seem to appear to be doing it all by themselves.

PAU L O : But Myles, do you know how I see that? First of all

I recognize that your experience is a social experience.

In fact, we cannot be explained by what we individu

ally do, but undoubtedly there is a certain individual

9

Formative Years

dimension of the social realization. You see? That is,

there is something in Myles Horton who is just Myles

Horton. There is not another Myles in the world , just

yourself, as well as all of us here.

M Y L E S : Everybody 's that way.

PAU L O : Everybody's that way. It is in this way that I ask the

question because I am curious about how the individual

dimension of the social being, Myles, works inside of

this social and historical context .

M Y L E S : I bel ieve in another frame of reference . When I talk

about Highlander and my experiences at Highlander,

people forget that at the time I was having those ex

periences and having those influences on Highlander,

there were other staff members also doing the same

thing. I can only tell the way it looked from my perspec

tive. It gives the impression that there were no other

perspectives.

PAU LO : Yes .

M Y L E S : That's the hesitancy I have, so I would hope to be

.able to kind of avoid that. And the other thing I would

hope to do would be to make it clear that my ideas have

changed and are constantly changing and should change

and that I 'm as proud of my inconsistencies as I am my

consistencies. So I 'd just l ike to shy away from the idea

that somehow I 've had these ideas and they 've had such

and such an effect .

I remember one time I was discussing Highlander

with Robert Lynd, a sociologist who wrote Middletown.

Bob said, "Myles, you tell a whole different story from

what you told three or four years ago when I first met

1 0

Formative Years

YOU." And I said , "Well sure, I 'm a different person

in different situations. I haven't stopped learning be

cause I'm no longer in school." Lynd said, "You'll never

be satisfied. You are the perfect example of somebody

who sees a mountain, who says this is my goal and it's

an almost impossible goal, and yet says I 'm going to

climb that mountain . I'm going to dedicate everything

I 've got , my life and everything, to achieving that goal.

When this person gets up on top of that mountain and

sees that it's not as high as the next mountain, he says

well , this is not such hot stuff; it's not such a challenge .

I 'm going to try that mountain." Lynd said , "You'll never

end; when mountains run out you'll imagine them." I

have no objection to that !

PAU LO : On the contrary. It would be very sad.

M Y L E S : Wait three or four years , and I'll be thinking some

thing else. But there's a consistency in the sense that the

direction is the same.

PAU LO : I agree with you. This is for me ! I think that one

of the best ways for us to work as human beings is not

only to know that we are uncompleted beings but to

assume the uncompleteness. There is a l ittle difference

between knowing intellectually that we are unfinished

and assuming the nature of being unfinished . We are

not complete. We have to become inserted in a perma

nent process of searching. Without this we would die in

life . It means that keeping curiosity is absolutely indis

pensable for us to continue to be or to become. This is

what you said before. Fortunately you change, because

it should be very sad if now you did not know that you

1 1

Formative Years

will change, but just assumed that you might change. I t

is fantastic.

T H I R D PA RT Y : How did you learn that, Myles , and also

Paulo? Both of you have been teaching all your l ives,

trying to make other people restless and to learn never

to give up the curiosity. What made you end up that way?

M Y L E S : Well , I know exactly where I was born because a few

years ago an FBI agent came by and said in kind of an

embarrassed way, "If you ever have any need to prove

that you were born in the United States, why the F B I

has a record. I was sent down to find out whether or not

you were an American citizen, and I found the cabin

in which you were born, and I found people who re

member when you were born , so you were born here." I

thanked him because I had told him I was always under

the impression that I was born there !

The place he visited was a little place called Paulk's

Mill right outside of Savannah, Tennessee, down the

Tennessee River in a misplaced part of Appalachia.

Tennessee has a basin and the central part of Tennessee

is rimmed with mountains in the east and foothills in

the west and south . Paulk's Mill was in the western foot

hills section down on the Tennessee River. My people

on the Horton side had originally come from Watauga

settlement in east Tennessee, from El izabethton, not

very far from here. My mother 's people were Scottish.

They 'd come from North Carolina soon after the Revo

lutionary War. They got a land grant there for service

in the revolutionary army.

By the time I came along back in 1 905, my father

1 2

Formative Years

and mother, who had been through grammar school ,

were schoolteachers. Of course, at that time there were

so few people with advanced education that when they

started trying to get teachers for the primary schools

they had to employ people who had had just a l ittle bit

more education . Something like popular education in

Nicaragua; they had a l ittle bit more education than the

people they were teaching. That's important because I

think that's probably the basis of my interest in educa

tion, having parents who were teachers to start with .

Before I was school age, they were no longer teach

ers because the requirements had increased to where

you had to have one year high-school education before

you could teach. They couldn't afford to go back to

school and get that education; therefore they had to

stop teaching. But that interest stayed on.

My father was out of work for a while and took

all kinds of odd jobs, manual labor jobs. Then he got

into local politics and became a county official , a circuit

court clerk. The reason he got elected to that office was

that he was one of the few people in the county who

could write legibly-which I never learned to do! The

comity kept all the records in longhand, and his qualifi

cation was he could write. Later on when more people

learned to write, he lost his job, and then he was a day

laborer for a while. Worked as a salesman. Learned to

fix sewing machines and tried to figure out all kinds of

ways to make a living. My first real memories of what I

now know as poverty-at that time I didn't know it was

poverty, I just thought that was the way people l ived-

1 3

Formative Years

was when we were trying to raise cotton as sharecrop

pers out in the western part of Tennessee, where there

was a lot of flat land. The nearest school was at the town

of Brazil.

PAU LO : Brazil, that's very interesting!

M Y L E S : I went through the ninth grade at Brazil , so part of

my education was in Brazil !

When I went to eighth grade, that was the top grade.

Three of us were ready for the ninth grade, so they got

a teacher for the ninth grade in the school. She had

just been to about the tenth or eleventh grade. I didn't

have much help from teachers there, and I had to im

provise a lot , had to make do with whatever resources

were around , which didn't include books because they

didn't have any books in the library. Even before that

year ended, I realized that I wasn't learning anything

there and that I literally knew more than the teacher,

and more important I had an interest in learning, which

she didn't have. So my family and I decided I could

move into the town where I had been before, where

there were pretty good schools , but I didn't have any

money and they didn't have any money. I was 1 5 then.

I arranged to go to a town called Humboldt near Brazil

in west Tennessee. An old friend there that I 'd met in

the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, where my family

went to church, had a garage that had been made over

for a house servant who was no longer living there .

They let me sleep in their garage and I had a sterno

can heater for cooking. That was my kitchen. I was

going to high school and I got odd jobs mowing lawns

and things l ike that. Then finally I got a job working

Formative Years

part-time in a grocery store . So from then on I started

earning my own living.

Now my parents, who were still l iving in the country,

would come in a wagon and a team of mules from fif

teen miles away every week or two to shop, and if they

had some potatoes or something on the farm they could

share with me, they 'd bring that, but that was the best

they could do. They were determined that I have a

chance to go to school because that was important to

them, and I never questioned them. Just never occurred

to me not to go to school. It was just one of these things

that never came up. The question was, how do you go

to school? Where do you go to school? I think it's that

kind of family background that was very important to

my curiosity about learning and interest in getting an

education .

I can remember very well that I never felt sorry for

myself. I just accepted the fact that those were the con

ditions and that I was a victim of those conditions, but

I never had any feeling of inferiority to other people.

I think I got that from my parents too, because even

though they were struggling and they were poor, they

never accepted the fact that they were inferior to any

body or that anybody was inferior to them. That just

wasn't part of our vocabulary. I t wasn't part of the

thinking. So I didn't have the handicap of feeling sorry

for myself or blaming people who were in a better posi

tion than I was , because I guess somehow I sensed very

early on it was the system's fault and not the people's

fault . I never was much into blaming people, even

though some people were oppressive, because I figured

Formative Years

they were victims of the system just like I was a victim

of the system. I don't think I made that kind of analysis

as clearly as that, but I know that was my feeling, so

I was free from wasting a lot of energy feeling sorry

for myself. I stress that because I had an experience

that cleared that problem up once and for all when I

was going to school at Brazil, out in the country from

Humboldt .

I was 1 3 or 1 4 . And I used to have to ride a bony

horse four miles or walk to school. We didn't have a

saddle , so I got tired and sore riding that old horse.

So I decided I 'd rather walk. I walked four miles there

and four miles back. But in the meantime I belonged to

what was called the 4 -H Club. That's an organization

of farm young people that at that time was into help

ing young people learn to farm. One of the things that

they promoted was pride in growing the best chickens

or the best pumpkin or the best hog, and I had what

looked like was going to be a winner of a prize-and

I never won any prizes for anything in my life-a hog

that I 'd grown from a little pig. Somebody had given

me the pig and I fed it on the bottle and raised it, and

it got to be a fat pig. For the first time in my life, I was

looking forward to getting some kind of recognition for

something I had done. I thought the 4 -H Club would

give me a blue ribbon for this pig.

We had to eat the pig because we didn't have any

other food. My feeling was that I was being put upon

by my family, that I was being taken advantage of. I

started feeling very sorry for myself, and I went out be

hind the barn in the clover field . It was summertime and

1 6

Formative Years

the moon was shining and I walked out in that clover

field and I started crying. I felt so sorry for myself. I

just thought I had been mistreated . And I finally just

stretched out in the clover, and I was there in the clover

sobbing away, and here's the moon and the stars out,

everything was silent . Suddenly I thought how ridicu

lous this is. Nobody knows. The moon can't hear me.

The stars can't hear me. The clover can't hear me. No

human beings around . Here I am feeling sorry for my

self, and nobody knows it. So what's this all about . And

right there in the clover field I decided I would never be

sorry for myself again, that that was not the way to go .

That incident with the pig hurt me, but it didn't bother

anybody else. Didn't change anything. So it's absurd.

And besides, why should I feel sorry for myself when

actually the cause of my sorrow was family survival. No

fault of my parents. It was the fault of something else .

When I stopped feeling sorry for myself and I

started looking at where the blame was , not in my par

ents but in the situation that my parents found them

selves, there I was beginning to understand that there

are nonpersonal sources, which I later identified with

an oppressive system. At that time I just knew that they

weren't to blame. I knew my dad had hunted every

where for jobs. He'd been laid off every job he had.

He was doing the best he could, and my mother was

trying to make do with limited resources. They loved us

but they were crippled. They were handicapped by this

situation. And from that time on, I never felt sorry for

myself. I never felt that it was of any importance . I was

just a mighty small unit in this beautiful sky above , in

Formative Years

the clover field. My concerns should not dominate my

thinking. I think I got a little objectivity at that time.

Now there's times when I was tempted to feel sorry

for myself, but I always built on it. I remember when

I was in high school I was working, going to school,

borrowing other people's books, there was an evening

violin concert, which cost a quarter. Well I didn't have

a quarter, but I wanted to hear the concert. So I stood

outside where I could hear it . It started raining and I

tried to get in the front door so I could be in the dry

and l isten , but my teacher wouldn't let me in because

I didn't have a quarter. I can think of periods like that

when I was resentful, very resentful . But I wasn't re

sentful at the teacher who wouldn't let me in. I 'd already

gotten beyond that stage. I was resentful at the situation

that caused this. So I think I kind of liberated myself by

that experience in the clover fields, so I could begin to

think of other things . Since I didn't have to waste any

of my sympathy on myself, I had a lot more sympathy

for other people .

PAU LO : Myles, could you read?

M Y L E S : I learned to read even before I went to school be

cause we had books in the family. We didn't have many,

but even before we left Savannah where I grew up until

the seventh or eighth grade, I 'd been a reader. I read so

much that I 'd borrow books from everybody. We didn't

have money to buy books, so I read everybody else's

books. I would go house to house and ask them if they

had any books I could read. I remember very well when

a cousin of mine moved in from the country. He was

18

Formative Years

crippled and his family were quite well-to-do farmers,

and they retired and moved. They had a bookcase, a

beautiful big glass-covered bookcase with several feet

of books and ten or fifteen rows of books . I started

looking at those books . I 'd never seen so many books

together in anybody 's house. We didn't have a l ibrary

in that town , and school didn't have any books, so I

asked if I could read these books, and they said , "Well

yes ." It was a collection of old books that the family

had collected, dictionaries and religious books, books

on medicine, books on animal husbandry and all, dic

tionaries , encyclopedias-the whole collection . I said I

could keep them in order if I just can go down one

shelf and another, and they were amazed that anybody

would read books that way.

They didn't know that I had no taste about reading

at all . I just read words, and I never had a problem of

having any choices to make. I t never occurred to me

that you picked this book against that book. You just

read them all, read any book you could find. I read dic

tionaries . I read encyclopedias . I read dirty stories, and

I read pornography, and I read religious tracts . I read

whatever was next on the shelf. And I just read every

thing, so that's sort of a background on reading. That's

why I comment on the fact that the town of Brazil didn't

have any books and I didn't have any books and we

couldn't afford to buy books and nobody else in that

part of the country had any books, so that was a year of

not being able to get books.

PAU LO : But , Myles, look. As far as you can remember, how

1 9

Formative Years

did you relate your childhood experience before going

to school with the knowledge you got , with the experi

ence of the student Myles . You remember?

M Y LES : I was always getting in trouble for reading in school.

I was reading things that weren't assigned, and I 'd get

criticized for it . I used to put books behind the geogra

phy book because it was big, and I'd put the geography

book on the desk. I wasn't smart enough to think the

teacher would keep seeing me studying geography all

the time and nothing else . Finally the teacher walked

around while I was concentrating on my book and came

in behind me. She tapped me on the shoulder and sud

denly I realized that she was standing behind me seeing

what was behind the geography book. I can remem

ber exactly what I was reading. It was a series of books

about the boys in India and around the world . It was

a travelogue, sensational stories of adventure. And I

was in India. I wasn't there in that schoolroom. The

teacher actually opposed my reading because you were

supposed to study, and that's supposed to take all your

time, studying these l ifeless textbooks that I 'd already

read . I 'd read through the geography the first day ; I

didn't need to study that. I just went through that l ike I

went through everything else. It was just another book

to read to me. Then I read the Bible twice all the way

through l ike a book. It's a great book, one of the best

books I ever read. I grew up reading, and that stood me

in good stead a lot of times even when I was in college

later on.

THIRD PART Y : Did your mother actually teach you to read?

M Y L ES : I don't know how I learned to read. People used

20

Formative Years

to ask me-when I l ived at Savannah and I was bor

rowing their books-how I learned to read so young,

and I couldn't remember. I couldn't tell anybody how I

learned to read.

PAU LO : I read in your text,· which you read in Copenhagen,

a very interesting scene, the precise moment in which

you staTted recognizing, in a much more deepened way,

the value of the books. That is precisely when you went

on more deeply in reading reality, drawing from your

experience. The longer ago it is, the more you began

to reflect on the experience and the more you discover

the value of the books.

•

I think that it's very interesting, because sometimes

we can fal l into some mistakes, for example, the mistake

of denying the value of books, the value of reading, or

denying the value of practice. I think we have to under

stand how books as theory and practice as action must

be constantly dialectically together, that is, as a unity

between practice and theory. I think that this is one

of the most important dimensions of your own life be

cause of what happened many years ago when you went

to school. It was some years later before you started

being challenged. You went to Denmark to see what

happened there, but undoubtedly your experience of

reading, as a boy before going to this Danish school ,

and your experience afterward in the school helped

Myles Horton, " I nfluences on Highlander Research and Education

Center, New Market, TN, USA," paper presented at a Grundtvig

workshop, Scandinavian Seminar College, Denmark, 1 983; pub

lished in Gl"undtuig'5 Ideas in North America-Influences and Parallels

(Copenhagen : Det Danske Selskab [Danish Institute) , 1 983).

2 1

Formative Years

you to know how far school was from the experience of

life , your way of trying to understand constantly what

you were doing. All these things have to do with the

experiences and the theory that we find inside of the

practice here [at Highlander] .

MYL.ES : At first, you see, during the period I was telling you

about, I didn't connect books with life . I didn't connect

books with reality. They were just entertainment, and I

was just reading mechanically. That's why I didn't make

any distinction between books . I had no taste or dis

crimination . I was just reading to read. I guess it gave

me some facility in reading, but actually I didn't try to

read fast, I didn't try to read for understanding. I just

tried to read because I didn't have anything else to do.

I t was later on that I started thinking books had some

thing in them for me. By the time I was in the high

school , I was beginning to read to make sense. I t was

earlier that I just read everything and didn't care what

was in it. I was beginning to learn there were things in

books that were worth knowing, not just entertainment .

I was reading more seriously, more selectively.

I can remember that I enjoyed reading Shakespeare

and a lot of the classics . The rest of the students hated

them because they just read excerpts and they just read

them for exams . At that period I was working and I

didn't have any money to buy textbooks. So I was bor

rowing my classmates' textbooks so I wouldn't have to

buy them. That's when I learned to read fast because

I had to get the books, read them fast, and get back

to them. In return for that , I would slip them answers

2 2

Formative Years

to questions on exams. We'd trade . I'd give them the

answers to the questions if they'd loan me their books.

PAU LO : But, Myles , I would like to come back to some point

in your reflections about reading and pleasure and the

examination , for example. I also love to read because I

never could separate reading and pleasure ; but I 'm as

glad, for example, in reading a good novelist as I am

glad in reading Gramsci. You see, for me, starting to

read a text is first a hard task, a difficult task. It's not

easy. Starting is not easy. For me what is fundamental

in the role of the teacher is to help the student to dis

cover that inside of the difficulties there is a moment of

pleasure, of joy. Of course, if I am reading a novel it

is easier for me because I am involved in an aesthetical

event that I don't know how to finish. In some way I also

may be rewriting the beauty I am reading. When I am

reading Gramsci, Vygotsky, or Giroux or when I was

reading your writing this morning, I also am and was

in search of some beauty, which is the knowledge I have

there. That is, I have to grasp in between the words

some knowledge that helps me not exclusively to go on

in the reading and in understanding what I'm reading,

but also to understand something beyond the book I

am reading, beyond the text. It is a pleasure. For me

there is a certain sensualism in writing and reading

and in teaching, in knowing. I cannot separate them.

Knowing for me is not a neutral act , not only from the

political point of view, but from the point of view of my

body, my sensual body. It is ful l of feelings, of emotions,

of tastes.

23

Formative Years

"Reading has to be a loving event"

PAU L O : I learned how to read and to write with my father

and my mother under the trees of the backyard of my

house . Mango trees. And I used to write in the dirt with

a piece of twig. It's very interesting. I knew words with

which I started my learning were words of my horizon ,

of my experience, and not the words of the experience

of my parents. They started doing that to· me. It's very

fantastic because many years later when I was begin

ning to work in this field as an educator, I repeated

what my parents did with me. I remembered during

the process that it was like this that I learned how to

read and to write.

I did not have, nevertheless , the same richness of

experience that Myles had. I did not read as much as

he read, for example . I was born some eight years be

fore the big crash-l was born in Ig2 1 -and my middle

class family suffered a lot of the consequence of that.

I had the possibility to experience hunger. And I say

I had the possibility because I think that that experi

ence was very useful for me. Of course my childhood

was not so dramatic . I could eat anyway. Millions of

Brazilian children today don't eat , but at least I could

eat, something that made it possible for me to survive .

I entered the secondary school much older than the

average student. I was in the first year of the secondary

school when I was 1 6 years old , and it was too much for

the normal students. I remember that I had difficulty

understanding. Sometimes I considered myself stupid

because I had such difficulty understanding the nor-

24

Formative Years

mal and bureaucratic lessons of my school. I suffered a

lot because I thought that I was very stupid . That is, I

didn't know it should be better, but I thought that I was

stupid, and in thinking that I was, I suffered. In fact I

had difficulty understanding for different reasons, not

exclusively because I was hungry but mainly due to the

very process of schooling, the very deficiencies of some

of the schools I was in. Since that time, I believed that

even though I was not convinced about my capacity of

learning, it should be possible to learn . I laughed, too,

but I did not love the ways I was being taught . After

ward, in the secondary school , I had good experiences

with some teachers who challenged me more than the

others. Little by little I came into this kind of discovery.

T H I R D PA RT Y : What were your parents doing and how did

that affect their work?

PAU L O : My father died very young. He was 52 years old

when he died . It's a very strange experience for me to

know that I am older than my father. He was a mil itary

man but a democratic one, very democratic one. When

he retired he could not do anything more, just receive

a small amount of money.

My mother was not prepared to work, unless inside

of the house. All that my father got normally from

his retirement was not enough for us to live on well.

In 1 934, he died, and I was 13 years old. Then the

situation became more difficult. We did not have at that

time in Recife (it's my city) public schools at the level

of secondary school . My mother had to try to find a

secondary school where I could start without paying.

She tried a lot. Every day she left the house to search

Formative Years

for a school . I was waiting for her, full of hope, but

without being sure, and she said nothing, nothing. But

one day she arrived, I went to receive her on the train,

and she was smiling. She said , "Today I got a school

for you ." Until today I have a strong feeling of grati

tude to the couple-the director, AIvizio Araujo, and

his wife , Genove-who gave me the possibility of being

here today, talking with Myles. It has to do with being

here with Myles now because Araujo made it possible

for me to go to school. He was the director of a fantastic

secondary school in Recife that was very famous at that

time.· I always l ike to express my gratitude to him.

For me the virtue of gratitude is fundamental to

human beings. But of course I don't understand grati

tude in order to do what my conscience says to me that

I could not do. For example, I never would vote for a

reactionary person in order to be grateful. But taking

it from the discussion, I would do everything I could

for this director and his wife.

When I started studying in this school , I felt so chal

lenged by some of the teachers that in three years I

could teach Portuguese language and syntax. The more

possibility I had to read the good Brazilian and Por

tuguese grammars, philogists , l inguistics, the more I

could discover this question of taste .

I discovered that reading has to be a loving event.

I still remember when I was not yet married, being

• Araujo was the director of Osvaldo Cruz School. In 1 988 Paulo mar

ried Araujo's daughter, Ana Maria Araujo, historian and the author

of ATUllfabetismo No Brasil, a history of illiteracy in Brazil (Sao Paulo :

I N EP, 1 989) .

Formative Years

alone in the small house where we used to live-read

ing, making notes, observations, at two o'clock in the

morning. Sometimes my mother used to come in to say

to me, "It is too much. You have to sleep." But I had

such an almost physical connection with the text. It was

this experience that began to teach me how reading is

also an act of beauty because it has to do with the reader

rewriting the text. I t's an aesthetical event.

I was maybe 19 years old. And I always remember

that it was a great feeling of happiness. Because of that,

I said to Myles that it's no different for me if I am read

ing poetry or if I am reading Marx. I try to get the

beauty in the very act of reading, you see . This is for

me something that many times teachers don't try to do.

M Y L E S : They try to kill off this beauty actually.

PAU LO : The students read, as Myles said , because they are

obliged to read some text , whose relationship with the

context they don't grasp.

M Y L E S : I can remember, when I was in high school, how

sad I was that my classmates didn't like to read poems,

stories, literature. I enjoyed it so much and they hated

it. I thought it was the teachers that did that to them,

and I resented that . I could see this system, where

teachers were killing off any possibility of students ever

enjoying this literature. To them it was something that

you had to learn, memorize, and you hated it because

you had to do it. And I can remember very clearly how

I took my resentment out on the teachers. I didn't at

that stage speak out and challenge them or try to orga

nize a campaign against them, but I would read in their

classes and ignore them. That was my way of protest-

Formative Years

ing, my way of saying don't interfere with my reading.

I have more important things to do than to fool with

your silly questions. It was always a contest. I always

had problems. The teachers resented my lack of respect

for them.

I can remember very well the wife of the superinten

dent, who could never have gotten a job if she hadn't

been his wife . She resented me most of all. In her class,

she asked me a lot of questions, so I had to listen. But

I refused to stop reading, and she was always trying

to trick me into stopping. I 'd l isten to her questions

with one ear all the time because I knew it was a game.

I didn't care what question it was, I was going to be

ready to answer it at the same time I was reading. This

used to make her furious because I could do that . So I

carried on this battle with the teachers all through high

school. I didn't respect them because I thought they

were killing all the creativity. I became very critical of

the way things were done. I had no way of expressing

this except ignoring them to show what I thought, but

I did develop a critical attitude at that time.

There's two things in my life that were very impor

tant in terms of where I spent my time, one was school

and the other was church. In that little town, many

of us were interested in education or religion. That's

where people were . That's where the social life was.

Part of my life was in a church community, part was

in the school community, the other part was in a work

community. When I was in high school there were two

things that happened in this l i ttle Cumberland Presby

terian Church in H.umboldt, where I was going to high

Formative Years

school. One of them was a missionary who was telling

how many souls he had saved in Africa, and I was im

pressed with that. I thought that was great, saving souls,

until he says the ones that I didn't save are going to

hell . I said wait a minute. Something's wrong with this

kind of thinking. He said if they 're told about Christ

and they don't accept him, then they go to hell , but

if they aren't told , then they don't go to hell because

they aren't responsible. So I did a l i ttle mental arith

metic (at which I was very poor but good enough for

that purpose) and figured out how many people he was

damning to hell , how many people he had told that

weren't converted and how many people he sent to hell .

The more I thought about that , the more incensed I got

at this whole procedure, damning these people to hell .

The missionary had a discussion period, and al l these

people were asking theological questions. So I asked

him an arithmetic question. I asked, "How many people

have you sent to hell? According to your analysis , for

every person you've saved, you've sent hundreds to hell .

Why, wouldn't it have been better if you'd stayed home,

there'd be more people in heaven if you had stayed

home?" Well the people were furious !

As a high school kid , I was active in the church. I

was head of the youth group at the church at the time

and an active church worker, but I was beginning to

get very critical . I was willing to speak up because I felt

comfortable there, I felt at home and I thought I could

do that. Of course I found out after I did that, I wasn't

supposed to ask questions or even think about anything

l ike that.

Formative Years

Even later on in the same period I spoke out . I was

the head of a regional religious youth group, and I was

presiding over a meeting. I got up at the introduction

and said we've got a lot of work to do because we've

got to talk about religion six days a week instead of one

day. Most of the people are just concerned about it on

Sunday, and we got to take care of the rest of the week.

The preacher said, "Now, Myles, that's an insult , you

know." I said, "Well working in the store where I work

I realize that the people, a lot of them officials in this

church, don't l ive their religion during the week. They

lie, they're hypocrites, they steal ." He said , "What do

you mean?" I said , "In my job I see things that you

don't see." I was somebody in the church, but in that

store I was a servant. I found out who paid the bills

for some black children, who cheated on their bill , who

said food was spoiled when it wasn't. These were lead

ing citizens. I was just fed up with this whole hypocrisy,

and I was just ready to explode about this Sunday reli

gion. A lot of my learning came out of not books but

working in that store. I t's interesting that I could feel

free to speak out, was able to speak out in the church,

whereas I couldn't find a mechanism for speaking out

in the high school except by my show of disrespect.

It was at that stage that reading took on a completely

different meaning to me because I was beginning to

deal with real problems in life. When I 'd read, I was

informed by that reading. I 'd get ideas from the read

ing, I 'd get emboldened by it, especially poetry, and it

took a new meaning. I was no longer reading to pass

the time away. Oh, I enjoyed reading. I was able to tie

Formative Years

books and reading with life. I can remember very well

how I began to be much more selective, saying I can't

just read this book because it's next on the shelf any

more. I was beginning to make that connection but I

was still coming at it from a book point of view.

PAULO : What fascinates me in reading good books is to find

the moment in which the book makes it possible for

me or helps me to better my understanding of reality,

of concreteness. In other words, for me the reading of

books is important to the extent that the books give me

a certain theoretical instrument with which I can make

the reality more clear vis-a-vis myself, you see. This is

the relationship that I try to establ ish between reading

words and reading the world. I always was interested in

understanding, as you were, the reality, which I mean

reading reality. But the process of reading reality in

which we are enveloped demands, undoubtedly, a cer

tain theoretical understanding of what is happening in

reality. Reading of books makes sense for me to the

extent that books have to do with this reading of reality.

There have been many books during my process of

permanent fOTTnllfiio, or formation . There were many

books, and there are still , which made it possible for

me to better my understanding of the phenomena. This

is for me what we should propose to the students. It

has to do with reading the text in order to understand

the context. Because of that, I have to have some in

formation about the context of the author, the person

who wrote the book, and I have to establish some rela

tionship between the time and the space of the author,

and with my context. I cannot just suggest the students

Formative Years

read Gramsci . I feel obliged to say something about the

time and the space of Gramsci. I cannot just translate

Gramsci into Portuguese because in order to make this

translation, it's necessary for me to understand the con

text in which he wrote and he thought. In reading him,

many times I couldn't have said it better myself. And it

is for me beautiful .

I come back again to the question of beauty, and

also to the question of keeping the problem of beauty. I

would like to say something and maybe you agree with

me. It has been told us, is it right, that beauty in writing

is a question for literature. The scientist is not obliged

to grasp the aesthetical moment of language. The more

a scientist writes beautifully, the less of a scientist he or

she is . For me it is not right. It is a mistake. For me

the scientist who is not able to write beautifully mini

mizes his or her science and falls into an ideological lie,

according to which the scientists have to escape from

beauty.

Let us say that beauty and simplicity are not virtues

to be cultivated exclusively by the literatos, but also by

scientists. The scientist is not obliged,just because he or

she is a scientist, to write ugly. This is why I always insist

on saying to my students that writing beautifully does

not mean scientific weakness. I t is, on the contrary, a

kind of duty we have . The writers , no matter if they are

scientists or philosophers, have to make understanding

easier.

M Y L E S : That's why poetry is so wonderful . Poetry is more

selective in the use of words to create images and feel-

Formative Years

ings , more selective than prose quite often, and cer

tainly more than scientific academic writing.

I was just trying to think, as you were talking, about

how what you were saying related to my experiences in

reading. As I was saying earlier, the time came when I

was beginning to relate what I read to life experiences .

The example I used was relating what I had read in the

Bible and the Christian principles I had been taught

to every day practice-where these principles weren't

carried out. I was beginning to see the contradictions

between what I had read and what I had come to believe

and what I learned experientially. They are altogether

different things. At the same time I was beginning to

test out in l ife things I 'd read in books and relate them

to my own experience. I still enjoy reading poetry,

novels, essays , reading about nature and things that

don't have any immediate practical connection with the

problems I'm dealing with, but that are a source of cre

ative imagination, keeping me from getting too practi

cal. I carried thFOJJgh my life this interest in reading

things just for the sheer joy of reading them, which I

don't find at all unconnected with what I do. Sometimes

I get my best ideas from something that has nothing to

do with my work.

That doesn't mean that I didn't get to the stage

when I consciously read very selectively things I thought

would be helpful in understanding what I was experi

encing. For example, later on, when I was trying to

figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I very con

sciously read books like the history of the utopias and

33

Formative Years

the great Russian novels. I read things that I thought I

would enjoy reading but at the same time give me some

insights into what I was trying to do.

I made a statement about reading once back dur

ing the industrial union period when Highlander

was involved in labor organizations and labor educa

tion. Many groups-the C I O , the Catholic Church, the

Communist Party, the Socialist Party-were setting up

schools to be part of this wave of interest in labor edu

cation. A young priest from Nashville asked me : "What

makes Highlander work? What we do doesn't work.

Workers won't come to our classes, but people come

here." Who are you, he was saying, and what is it that

helps you understand how to make this thing work?

He asked me what two or three books have influenced

me. I said that if I look back and think of the influ

ences that have been most important to me in trying to

figure out what to do, they were the Bible, Shelley, and

Marx. First was the Bible because it gave me an ethical

background. I t gave me a sense of the great rel igious

truths and insights, and I was shaped a lot by that in

terms of my values. Then I said I became discouraged

with the people who were "religious," and I was turned

off by their hypocrisy. I was beginning to lose the kind

of faith and inspiration that had been helpful as I was

growing up, and I was getting very cynical. Earlier on in

high school I had been interested in Shelley, but I had

not read him very carefully. I reread some of Shelley 's

poems that I had read in high school . I read Prome

theus Unbound, where Shelley defies the people's threats

and punishment and the bribery. Shelley stands against

34

Fonnative Years

that. This young poet was standing for social justice and

saying that's the important thing. I got very excited and

I reread all of Shelley, and that really straightened me

out in a way. It gave me a feeling that I wasn't going

to give up. I wasn't going to be subverted by what I

was seeing. I was going to do what I wanted to do re

gardless of anything, and the way to do it was not to

be afraid of punishment and not to be tempted by re

wards. Not to want to be famous, nor get rich, have

power, or be afraid of hell or threats and ostracism. It

started me on another line of thinking. I started to take

more control of my own life and not be influenced so

much by what other people thought or said or did. I got

to the place where I was terribly concerned about how

I could relate my values to society. At that time I said

it's not important to be good, it's important to be good

for something. But, what was that something I cou ld be

good for, and how could I figure out how to be useful

in society and make a contribution?

That's when, in reading everything I could find

to try to help me, I ran into Marx. When I learned

something about Marxism and started reading some of

Marx's writings, I realized that here's a way to analyze.

This is a way to look at society, Paulo. I wasn't overly im

pressed with some of Marx's predictions or some of the

conclusions he reached, but I was terrifically impressed

by the way of analyzing, the way of looking at society.

And I was also very much impressed by his devotion to

the ppor and the fact that he was trying to work out a

way to do exactly what I was trying to do, help the poor,

the masses of the people. I had that kind of identity

35

Formative Years

with him. That was the third influence. So when I told

this priest about these three books he said : " That's not

helpful at all ! That's just more confusing than ever! "

The Bible, Shelley, Marx. Those books played a very

important role at certain points in my life.

PAU L O : Yes. I remember, for example, how much I was

helped by reading Frantz Fanon . That is great writing.

When I read Fanon I was in exile in Chile . A young

man who was in Santiago on a political task gave me

the book, The Wretched of the Earth. I was writing Peda

gogy of the Oppressed, and the book was almost finished

when I read Fanon . I had to rewrite the book in order

to begin to quote Fanon. You see , this is a beautiful

example that I was influenced by Fanon without know

ing it. I had different cases l ike this, in which I felt

conditioned, "influenced ," without knowing. Fanon was

one. Albert Memmi who wrote a fantastic book, The

Colonizer and the Colonized, was the second. The third

one who "influenced" me without knowing it was the

famous Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who wrote a

beautiful , fantastic book, Thought and Language. When

I read him for the first time, I became frightened and

happy because of the things I was reading. The other

influence is Gramsci . Then when I meet some books-l

say "meet" because some books are like persons-when

I meet some books, I remake my practice theoretically.

I become better able to understand the theory inside of

my action.

One of the important tasks we should have as teach

ers should be not to have the experience on behalf of

the students. We cannot do that . They have to have their

Formative Years

experience. But maybe we should put to the students at

least two times in a semester about how we study. How

we do. I used to do that with the students . I used to read

chapters of books with the students in graduate courses

because many times the students don't know yet what

reading means. You must give testimony to the students

about what it means to read a text . I remember that

one day a young student came to me in one of these

courses in which I read with the students, and she said

to me : "Paulo, the first time I read the Pedagogy of the

Oppressed I felt bad. I did not l ike the book. I thought

that the book was very, very difficult for me even to

understand. Now I discover that I did not know how to

read , and I am learning what it means to read ."

I think that we should talk with the students about

all the implications of writing and reading. We should

make clear to them that it is irresponsible to suggest

that reading is something easy. It is also bad not to make

clear that reading is a kind of research. In this way,

studying means finding something, and the act of find

ing brings with it a certain taste, a certain moment of

happiness that is creation and re-creation. No, it's not

easy, but it is good to be done. You see, we should chal

lenge students to get this creative moment and never ac

cept their minds becoming bureaucratized , something

that has to read between 10 and 1 1 a .m. and write be

tween 2 and 3 p.m. No, it's not l ike this ! It's like making

love-that cannot be determined for Wednesdays and

Saturdays. Nothing scheduled about that !

I am sure that one of the most tragic il lnesses of our

societies is the bureaucratization of the mind. If you go

37

Formative Years

beyond the previously established patterns, considered

as inevitable ones, you lose credibil ity. In fact , however,

there is no creativity without ruptura, without a break

from the old, without conflict in which you have to make

a decision. I would say there is no human existence

without ruptura.

"I couldn't use all this book learning"

M Y L E S : Thinking back to when I was in college and I still was

learning most of the things from books : The college I

went to was a little Presbyterian college here in Tennes

see. It had a good traditional l ibrary. I was majoring in

English Literature, but I was also interested in history.

I took a course in the French Revolution in which the

teacher lectured from a book and then gave an exami

nation on what happened during a certain period. Well,

I didn't think so much of the textbook, and I didn't

accept the authors' analysis . So I read some other books

about the French Revolution, and I formulated my own

idea. I was trying to learn while I was reading, seriously

trying to understand what went on. So when the pro

fessor asked his question, I answered it from another

book, a book that he'd never read. So he gave me a

failed grade because I'd given the wrong answer. He

said I should have paid attention . I said I remembered

what he had said , but I just didn't agree with it. He said :

"You know you're a student here. You're not supposed

to make judgments. You're supposed to l isten to me,

and when you take an exam, i t's on what I taught you."

Well I realized that he didn't know anything else and

Formative Years

he was so indignant with me because I knew more than

he did about that question . That was quite obvious to

me. I thought if that's the way this course is going to be,

I 'm not going to spend my time here, so I just walked

out of the class. I didn't think anything about it.

I did that with several teachers along the way, and

it never occurred to me to give it any thought . After

Highlander was started, I was in a meeting in Nashville ,

and this same professor comes to the meeting. He said :

"I want to introduce myself. I want to pay tribute to

Myles Horton because he changed my life." I looked at

this guy-my God, what's he going to say? He told that

story I told you. He said : "I was furious, but I couldn't

get it out of my mind, and the more I thought about

it the more 1 realized what he was saying was true . I t's

after that year 1 quit teaching because 1 knew 1 wasn't

fit to teach. I just wanted to come and say publicly that

he was right and I was wrong." That was a tremendous

thing for a person to say. He was willing to publicly

say that here I was a student who was right and he the

professor was wrong.

The one professor that I learned something con

structive from was a young sociology professor from

the University of Chicago. I was doing a paper on the

cooperative started for tobacco growers in Kentucky. I

was doing a lot of reading and research and getting all

kinds of documentation. I thought I 'd done a very good

paper because it had all the facts in it and a good analy

sis. I was expecting to get a good straight A on that,

and I got it back with about a B - and a note saying

"well-documented, but it isn't who said it but whether it

39

Formative Years

is true ." That was a real shocker to me. That was really

the beginning of my understanding something. I was

getting to be kind of an authority because I thought

that was what you were supposed to do. He said, "No,

is it true? You decide whether it's true or not ." That

started me on a whole new course of thinking, so all of

my college wasn't wasted . I educated one professor and

I learned from another.

T H I R D P A RT Y : You've both talked about learning from read

ing, and for both of you reading has to be connected to

experience. Where did you start learning about learn

ing from experience?

M Y L E S : I didn't know even when we started Highlander that

I had learned some things. I learned from experience

and reading (although I had more reading than I had

experience) . I would analyze experiences I had and

try to learn from those experiences, try to figure out

what they meant, but not in any kind of systematic way.

What I finally decided, after three or four years of read

ing and studying and trying to figure this thing out,

was that the way to do something was to start doing it

and learn from it . That's when I first understood that

you don't have to look for a model, you don't get the

answers from a book. You look for a process through

which you can learn, read and learn . I was conscious

at that time-slowly became conscious because I had

all this academic background , you see-that the way

you really learn is to start something and learn as you

go along. You don't have to know it in advance be

cause if you know it in advance you kill it by clamp

ing this down on the people you're dealing with . Then

Formative Years

you can't learn from the situation, can't learn from the

people. I understood that. I wrote in this little piece I

did in Denmark that we have to unlearn. I was at High

lander with a bunch of other people-Jim Dombrowski,

John Thompson, very smart academicians-trying to

use what we had learned from books. We knew we had

to start , but we also didn't know that we couldn't use all

that learning. So it wasn't until Highlander started

and we were told in no uncertain terms by the actions

of the people we were dealing with that we didn't know

what we were talking about-that I first really seriously

understood that I couldn't use all this book learning.

This [book learning] was such a rich experience to me

that I thought it would be valuable to other people, and

I didn't understand that I had gotten away from how

people really learned, except in academic circles.

Two things happened in the early years of High

lander that are very important. We all agreed we had to

start learning from the people we were working with ,

and that we had to learn from each other. We all learned

together, and when I talk about what I learned then, a

lot of it I learned from other staff members. I learned

a tremendous lot from Zilphia,* my wife, who brought

in a whole new cultural background, drama and dance

and music, oral history, storytelling-all kinds of things

that I 'd grown up knowing but just hadn't thought of

as being related to learning. So a lot of the learning

* Zilphia Mae Johnson was born in Paris . Arkansas. She met Myles

when she attended a two-month residential session at Highlander in

January of 1 935. They were married in March 1 935. Zilphia died

in 1 956.

Formative Years

I got came from staff together trying to learn from

the people. And that was the beginning of what really

became Highlander. That was how the transition was

made.

T H I R D P A RT Y : Did you consciously reflect and study to

gether?

M Y L E S : We talked. We had meetings. We discussed what

the hell we were learning. We laughed ! Three of us

had been in Union Theological Seminary together, so

you know we had some academic background. We all

studied with Reinhold Niebuhr. We were Depression

era products. We were in that kind of radical period

in American history where people were beginning to

question the system, where people were beginning to

think. We'd been stimulated by the explosive sort of

thinking of Niebuhr and people like him, who kind

of blew your mind. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was there at

Union as a student when I was. There were other stu

dents you'd know about today, but of course when we

were there nobody knew anything about any of us.

At Highlander, we were learning together. I think

we really kind of had our comeuppance in a way. We

thought we had a lot of answers to things, and we sud

denly realized that we didn't know much. So here we

were, all struggling to learn together at Highlander.

We had the same kind of a problem. That's really the

beginning. It took something like that for us to move

over and start with experience, letting book knowledge

throw whatever light it could on that. We became less

important in the process than the people we were work-

4 2

Formative Years

ing with. Before we had that insight, we thought at least

we were equal with the people we were dealing with .

But we didn't know that we had to keep out of the act .

Our job was to get them to act . Then we reacted to that

action and used whatever we could bring to bear on it .

So there was a whole inversion .

T HIR D PARTY : You said before that you felt at that time you

all had the answers to the questions that you thought

the people ought to have.

MYLES : That's right.

T H I R D P A RT Y : When and how did you learn that the ques

tions that you had, that you thought they ought to have,

weren't the ones they had?

MYLES : When they weren't paying any attention to us. When

we saw that we weren't talking about their needs. We

were going to bring democracy to the people , I mean

bring it to them like a missionary and dump it on them

whether they liked it or not. We thought we were going

to make them world citizens. All of us had traveled,

we'd been around, abroad, and we'd read all this stuff,

and we were going to bring all this enlightenment to the

people. We knew how to do it-organize unions and

cooperatives and political action and have educational

programs. We knew about how to do those things . Some

of us had done some of it before. All of us had some ex

perience before. We were further along in our political

thinking than most people in the United States at that

time. So we thought we were pretty good, but the people

didn't pay any attention to anything we were doing.

Nothing we were doing they reacted to. We couldn't

43

Formative Years

even talk a language they understood. A lot of their

language was nonverbal . We were verbal. We were all

certified as verbal, but we couldn't communicate !

T H I R D P A RT Y : What was it that happened in your lives that

allowed each of you to come to the understanding that

you have, the sort of insight and understanding that

you have about people and their knowledge and their

experiences and the role that plays in education and

working for political change.

M Y L E S : I think many people who are interested in human

values-particularly people who are socialized here in

the South through their rel igious background-are mo

tivated to try to find some way to be useful and serve.

This can be a self-serving individual ism. I think the

problem is that most people don't allow themselves to

experiment with ideas , because they assume that they

have to fit into the system. They say how can I l ive out

these things I believe in within the capitalist system,

within the subsystem of capitalism, the microcosm of

capital ism, the school system and within the confines

of respectability, acceptance. Consequently, they don't

allow themselves to think of any other way of doing

things . I don't think there's anything unique in having

the kind of ideas that we have. That's kind of nickel-a

bushel stuff, I think. Ijust think most people can't think

outside the socially approved way of doing things and

consequently don't open up their minds to making any

kind of discoveries. I think you have to think outside

the conventional frameworks.

I started thinking outside the conventional frame

works fairly early. We talked about that a little bit

44

Formative Years

already. I was challenging the system, challenging the

conventionalities and beginning to ask questions and

beginning to not have any respect for the schooling sys

tem fairly early, so I suppose I was not too confined

trying to fit into the system. My mind could follow its

own discoveries to a greater extent than some other

people who are less liberated from that kind of con

straint.

But the reason I'm making this analysis is because

I was fitting into that framework to begin with , and

I thought you had to do that . It just didn't occur to

me that there's any way you could work outside of the

approved ways of working, what you got paid to do.

You've got to have somebody to hire you, and you had

to think of what you had to do to get hired , in other

words how you're going to accept the whole capitalist

framework of having to work for somebody so they can

make money out of your labor. Then you've got to think

about providing profits for them or they wouldn't have

any incentive to keep you. Or if you're going to work

for the government or for some religious organization

or something l ike a labor organization, then you've got

to satisfy their demands. You have to think in terms of,

"How can I choose among one of these things that I like

to do knowing full well that I'll have to do what they

tell me to do?" That I didn't question for a while, and I

was on the borderline of raising those questions in my

mind, but I hadn't quite got around to thinking other

than individualistically. In college I was still thinking

you had to fit into those systems and frameworks .

One of the first experiences I had that touches on

45

Formative Years

this, as far as I can remember, is this : I was active in col

lege and I was trying to work out a program for the Stu

dent YM C A . I was president of the Student YM C A , and

we were trying to deal with discrimination on a world

basis as well as a local basis-you know the whole busi

ness of fear in spirit , of oppression, and so on. There

were a couple of young Jewish students from New Jer

sey that I was rooming with (we had a house) , and a

couple of other people, none of whom were interested

in this particular topic. [ had exhausted all of my re

sources, all the things I could think of. I couldn't think

of anything that wouldn't be repetitious or boring. One

of these friends asked me what I was thinking about,

what was on my mind, and I just told them what my

problem was. Well , within five minutes they had sug

gested a half dozen things I 'd never thought of, because

they were coming in from a fresh point of view. They

just tried to help me solve a problem, and I was struck

with that because it never occurred to me that I could

get help from people, except from the people who were

involved in exactly the same thing I was involved in.

That was a very enlightening experience, and I very

consciously noted that down as a way to get things done.

I started using that much more widely when I 'd run up

against a problem. When [ couldn't think of a good way

to do something, [ would involve the first person [ saw

in a conversation about it or get some people to talking

about it because [ found [ could learn things from other

people that up to that time I thought I had to work out

for myself. [ didn't make much of it at the time, but

it started a new kind of practice for me, an apprecia-

Formative Years

tion of having the group make a contribution instead of

me as an individual . And instead of demoted I got ele

vated to another level. Instead of feeling less confident

I felt more confident, and it didn't make me feel l ike

I was dependent. It made me feel more independent,

because it was a constructive experience. Well that was

one event that led me to thinking outside conventional

frameworks.

The next one was when I was working in the Cum

berland mountains for the Presbyterian Sunday School

Board. At first, my job was to start and run the daily

vacation B ible schools in connection with mountain

churches. After the first year, I had a little staff of

people who worked with other students. I was begin

ning to lose interest in just doing that kind of thing

because that was getting kind of boring. I didn't see it

had much of a potential for going very far. But I liked

to work in the mountains and I needed the money and

I wanted to get the experience, so I got to the place

where I could get my staff to run the Bible schools.

They l iked it . They were l ike I was in the first year,

and they didn't mind doing it. So I was free to do other

things . I was getting paid to do one thing, and I was

doing other things.

One of the things I was trying to do was to work

with adults , not with children. I was more interested

in adult education than childhood education. I was

working with a county farm agent who was starting co

operatives. I learned a lot-some positive, some nega

tive things-about cooperatives in that first experience

with him.

47

Formative Years

One time we had a l ittle daily vacation Bible school

out in the country from Ozone, Tennessee. There's a

waterfall at Ozone up in the Cumberland mountains,

and it's a beautiful rugged mountain area. I thought

I 'd try a little experiment, so I had the children take

an announcement back home saying that all the par

ents, the adults, were invited to a special meeting. I

didn't tell them what it was about because I didn't think

they'd come if they knew what it was about. So we had

a number of people come from several miles around ;

some walked, some rode horses . I don't think there was

one car in that area at that time. And what I did was

to start off, kind of l ike your base community group

people, by talking about the Bible and talking about the

state teaching Bible school, because that's what they had

come for. I took about two minutes on that, and then I

said : "You know, I know some of the problems here. I

know some of you people are working in mines. Some

of you people are trying to make a l iving on farms.

Some of you people are going off and working in tex

tile mills. Some of you are back home, suffering from

what happened to you in the mines and in the textile

mills." At that time people didn't know about black lung

or brown lung. Doctors just said that textile mills and

coal mines were healthy, good for you, and that these

people had tuberculosis. But I said , " It's getting pretty

serious , pretty desperate . Let's talk about some of these

problems that we have." So immediately they thought I

was going to give them the solutions to their problems.

They started talking about them, and I was hard

put, see, because I hadn't thought this thing out . This

Formative Years

was very elementary and I tried the best I could to

answer questions from what little I knew. I knew more

than they did about a lot of these things, because they

might know about the specific situation but they didn't

link it up with other situations , with general situations.

So I was able to help them a l ittle bit, putting it in some

kind of perspective . But that soon ran out; that soon

was exhausted in terms of dealing with their problems,

and I had to tell them that I didn't know these answers.

I suggested that we could get this county agent, and

a health person, and maybe somebody connected with

the unions , who could bring in resources. But they were

not satisfied with something in the future, and more in

desperation than anything else, I remembered my col

lege experience about turning to other people and get

ting ideas from others . So I said : "Well let's talk about

what you've done, maybe what you know will help some

body else and what they 've done to help you . Let's talk

about what you know. You know this better than any

body else. You don't have any answers , but you know

the problems."

That was the beginning of this understanding that

there's knowledge there that they didn't recognize. I

didn't have any terminology for this or any concepts for

this but that's what it was , you see . And to my surprise

and to their surprise-we were all equally surprised be

cause we were all equally naive about this-before the

evening was over people began to feel that from their

peers they were beginning to get a lot of answers.

So that was my second learning experience, but I

still didn't know what I knew. Just l ike they didn't know

49

Formative Years

what they knew, I didn't know what I knew. But I kept

talking about it and thinking about it, and that experi

ence was kind of tucked away, not right up front. It was

there in my psych, always kind of nagging at me, but I

couldn't quite get at it . The reason I couldn't get at it

was because I was trying to fit things into the traditional

way of doing things. I couldn't see how this was part

of anything that I knew anything about and I couldn't

quite bring myself to think there were ways of doing

things outside the system. I was so socialized to accept

that, that I was still limited by that. It didn't really ring

a bell very loud. The bell was ringing but was very low,

and when it would start ringing I 'd kind of cover it

up so I wouldn't have to listen to it , because I didn't

understand it .

Well, that was the beginning of that kind of experi

ence, but Ozone to me was more than just that experi

ence. After I had held adult meetings for a couple of

weeks, the word spread that there were people coming

from miles around, coming every night, and that was

a phenomenon they weren't used to. There was a lady

who owned a big house in Ozone who was getting ready

to retire, and she found out about my meetings and in

vited me to dinner at her house. She wanted to know

what I was doing in stirring up all this discussion , and

some of it was negative. And she said she'd l ike for me

to come there and l ive and do this kind of a program.

Wel l , that was completely beyond anything I could think

of at that time, you know. I was still going to school . I

had one more year in college, and I knew I wasn't ready

to settle down. So I thanked her and said , maybe later

50

Formative Years

on, maybe after a few years. Right then I didn't want to

do that because I really didn't feel I had any grasp of

anything. I used that concept of Ozone not because of

the experience 1 had with the people but because it was

a place and I need to think in terms of place, like High

lander to me is a place. Ozone was a place. John's Island,

where the Citizenship School started, was a place . My

mind's just more comfortable dealing with something I

could see. So from then on, any time I 'd have an idea

that I thought was germane with what I wanted to do,

I would put it down on notes, Ozone and I used "0," a

circle. But the circle was Ozone and the circle was these

people; it kind of combined everything. So at Union

Theological Seminary, my notes there had Ozone, you

know, "0." So Ozone stayed in my mind.

Well that's pretty much the background of my chang

ing ideas. From then on I was trying to figure out intel

lectually, you see, what to do. I spent one year in college,

one year working out of college, about three more years

in school and in Denmark trying to figure this thing out ,

and what I was doing was still looking for a model. I was

still looking somewhere else outside of my own experi

ence for something, some solution to this problem 1 had

of what I was going to do with my life and how I was

going to work. I was still stuck in that business of trying

to fit it in, so 1 did two kinds of things . One, I went

back into history because I thought maybe something

I could learn would throw light on my situation, and

in the process of doing that I got interested in the uto

pian communities. Here's some people who struggled

with this same problem. I read all the books I could on

Formative Years

utopias. I thought maybe that's the answer, these uto

pian colonies, these communes, getting away from life,

and kind of separating yourself and living your own

life . I was attracted to it but I was very skeptical from

the very beginning. It seemed to be too precious, too

"getting away" from things. I ended up visiting all the

remains of communes in the United States-Oneida,

Amana, New Harmony in Ohio. Here in Tennessee we

had Rugby, where Thomas Hughes started a Christian

socialist commune, which is now a tourist place. (They

don't tell what it really was . ) I ended up concluding

that they were just like I had already concluded-that

a person shouldn't live within himself. I thought that

a group that isolated itself from society shouldn't live

within themselves . That became a center. Life had to go

out, not turn in. And I discarded utopian communities .

Then I started trying to explore other possibilities ,

including learning about education in other countries.

And I finally ended up even going to Denmark to see

what the folk schools were like because I was impressed

with what they had accomplished . I read everything on

the folk schools in the University of Chicago library.

T H I R D P A RT Y : Myles, when you say you were still looking

for a model, at what point did you decide that you were

going to do a school?

M Y L E S : I knew I was going to do something in adult educa

tion in the mountains all along, but I didn't know what

form it would take, how to go about it .

T H I R D P A RT Y : SO you at this point stil l weren't thinking

about a school.

M Y L E S : I was thinking, how do you go about doing an educa-

Formative Years

tional job in the mountains. There was nothing in adult

education in this country that threw any l ight on it. I

had known Lindeman * and I knew other people who

were interested in adult education, but I couldn't relate

them back to Ozone . They just didn't seem to fit. I was

trying to find something that would fit, something that

would be relevant. I wasn't looking for a technique or

a method. I wasn't, and you know I still am not . That's

not what I 've ever been interested in. I was looking for

a process of how to relate to the people. Finally light

ening struck. Finally, it just became very dear that I

would never find what I was looking for. I was trying the

wrong approach. The thing to do was just find a place,

move in and start , and let it grow. It took me, let's see ,

about six years from the time I got interested . I was a

slow learner to find out that I didn't need to know; I just

needed to have a vision and that I shouldn't know. You

should let the situation develop. And of course you've

got to use anything that you've learned in the process .

Not that a l l this i s wasted, but you have to clear your

mind and start over because you can never get going

without starting. I was trying to be too rational about it

and trying to figure it out in advance .

One reason for this I 've already mentioned is con

straints of convention . The other reason is I 've never

felt comfortable experimenting with people, and I think

you have a responsibility to go as far as you can in

* Eduard Lindeman ( 1 885- 1 953) was a professor of social philosophy,

Colombia University School of Social Work. He is best known for his

book The Meaning of Adult Education (New York : New Republic, 1 926).

53

Formative Years

your head before you go out and just play around with

people. So that was part of my problem. I think you do

a lot of damage as well as a lot of good. The reason I was

aware of that was that here in the mountains we had had

missionaries of all kinds-religious missionaries , eco

nomic missionaries, government missionaries, political

missionaries-all coming down to save the people of

Appalachia. I thought a lot of those programs had been

detrimental, and I resented the exploitation of people

by somebody, particularly from the outside, who came

in with an idea they thought was good for people. I

didn't want to be another missionary coming in with

outside ideas and imposing them on people ; that was

part of my reservation that I was struggling with .

As I say I was a slow learner. I t took me a long

time to get comfortable with being free to respond to

people. Even having gone through that stage and talked

about it and discussed it with my fellow students and

with some of the teachers, with many other people, we

still got off on the wrong foot when we did it . We still

made the mistake of imposing with the best of inten

tions because that's all we knew. We came out of this

academic background and we were still within this orbit

of conventionality in education. We said, we're going

to let the thing grow, and yet we come in and we say

well , the only thing to do is to do education l ike educa

tion is done. We still haven't gotten beyond that stage.

But the thing that made Highlander work is that we

had a commitment. All of us had a commitment to make

it work in terms of the people's interest, not in terms

of ours. We didn't have any trouble saying the answers

54

Formative Years

we have are for problems people don't have. They 've

got other problems and we don't have any answers . We

didn't have any trouble dealing with that because we

were intellectually prepared and emotionally prepared.

We had to do some fast shifting around though, because

we still hadn't learned how to respond to people, but we

were committed to doing it. Once that commitment is

made, then you do it. You do whatever it takes. We had

to laugh at ourselves for thinking that we could figure

out in advance what to do.

That's the whole background, I think, as far as I can

see, on what my thinking was that went into this idea

of Highlander. It's rather interesting that here we are

within seventy-five miles of Ozone, over sixty years later

from the time I was there, with the idea that really took

form there: people learning from each other. You don't

need to know the answer. You can help people get the

answers. You have to know something; they know some

thing. You have to respect their knowledge, which they

don't respect , and help them to respect their knowl

edge. These seeds were planted there.

"I always am in the beginning, as you"

M Y L E S : I 'd be interested to know how this sounds to you,

Paulo, in terms of what actually took place. Now I know

what I think took place, but I 'd like to know what your

reaction is to this. Is this just a construct I 'm making of

the past, looking back, or is there some reality to it? Am

I imagining things or rewriting things?

PAU LO : No, I felt very very well l istening to you telling us

55

Formative Years

this story. I would like to say something also about my

beginnings-in which I still am, because I always am in

the beginning, as you.

I am convinced that in order for us to create some

thing, we need to start creating. We cannot wait to cre

ate tomorrow, but we have to start creating. I am sure

that in trying to create something inside of history we

have to begin to have some dreams. If you don't have

any kind of dream I am sure that it's impossible to cre

ate something. The dreams push me in order to make

them real , concrete, and the dreams, of course , also are

surrounded by values of other dreams. We never finish

having dreams. As you said earl ier, in a very beautiful

language, that you think about climbing the mountain,

but suddenly you climb the mountain and discover that

there is another one whose profile you could not yet see.

Then, without rejecting the first dream, you discover

that the first dream, which was the mountain, implies

or demands that your dream be expanded into new

dreams or visions. In the last analysis, this is the same

dream, with different moments. This happened also to

me, and it happens with everyone. For example, one

of my first dreams, when I was a child, was to teach.

I remember until today how I talked to myself about

becoming a teacher, and I was still in a primary school.

Thinking back, among other reasons it might have

been the difficulties we had in order to eat , for example ,

but I was already thinking to teach sometime. If you

asked me to teach what, I did not know at that time,

but I thought I had a certain kind of a love for teach

ing. Today when I think about that, it becomes clear to

Formative Years

me. In the last analysis , what I was loving was knowing.

For me it's impossible to understand teaching without

learning, and both without knowing. In the process of

teaching, there is the act of knowing on the part of the

teacher. The teacher has to know the content that he

teaches . Then in order for him or for her to teach, he

or she has first of all to know and, simultaneously with

teaching, to continue to know why the student, in being

invited to learn what the teacher teaches, really learns

when the student becomes able to know the content

that was taught. I t's impossible to escape from knowing

that what is important is to know what it really means

to know. I t's impossible to escape from that . Then, in

the last analysis, when I had the dream to teach some

day, it was , I am sure, my curiosity, my uneasiness , my

questions about the world, about my life, about the dif

ficulties we had, that I wanted to know. Because of that,

I used to ask questions even to myself.

There is another very important question aside in

my life that has to do with my task as an educator. In

my childhood I had companheiros who came from dif

ferent social classes. I had companheiros from the same

position of class that I had. Even today I speak about

me and my brother, for example, l ike "connective" chil

dren, using the magical expression of the conjunction .

I was a kind of conjunction , making the relationship

between the two classes . And we played soccer together

in the street in which we l ived . I visited it some months

ago, the same street where I played soccer a long, long

time ago when I was 9 or 10 years old. I remembered

how much it shocked me to be hungry, even though

57

Formative Years

I had something to eat. But I knew companheiros who

almost did not eat, and they were happy like me in the

football game, but they used to tell me in our conversa

tions that they were hungry. And one of the questions

I used to ask myself was this one-it was a naive ques

tion but an appropriate question for a child l ike I was

I asked constantly myself why, why is it possible that

some children eat and some other ones don't?

It was too much for me to understand that , but when

I think of that, I once again see how much I liked to

know, to think, to ask questions, to imagine, to realize,

and how much I see I 've begun in some ways to build

the dream I still have. That is, I 've begun to dream with

a different society. Of course, at that time I could not

even put some lines in the drawing of the society, but I

remember that at that time in a very concrete way-like

the children are concrete- I thought about the society

in which Pedro, Carlos, Dourado, and Dino (these were

friends) could eat , could study, could l ive free. I could

not imagine at that time what would cause the creation

of such a society, but it was my dream.

I was, in fact, beginning to have a vision of a dif

ferent kind of life, of a different kind of society-a

society less unjust, much more humanized. When I was

19 years old, 20 years old, I began to teach. First of all I

started teaching privately because in doing that I could

help the family, you know. I could help my mother con

cerning the budget of the family. Then I began to give

private classes of syntax and Portuguese language. I

still have the taste of having given the first class. It is

something that took my body with emotion , a feeling of

Formative Years

happiness. I almost cried out in the street after I gave

the first class. I taught two or three young people who

needed to know something concerning the process of

their working activity. When I started I never stopped .

I began to teach more and more. People began look

ing for me, asking me to teach them, and of course I

began to buy some important books about grammar

by Brazilian and Portuguese grammarians. Afterward,

I went beyond grammar and began to study philoso

phy of language, sociology of language, some books of

linguistics.

Suddenly I could teach Portuguese in the same sec

ondary school I spoke about earlier, whose Director

Araujo made it possible for me to study when my

mother asked him for a place for her son. He invited

me to teach. I will never forget that in the third day

of teaching in this very famous secondary school, sud

denly the director opened the door, came in the room,

got his chair, and stayed there in order to listen to my

speech class and observe how I worked. It was a beauti

ful moment of my life . The director was there-silent,

serious, without aggression but with his authority of his

position and with the authority of his competence. I

knew that it was a challenge. I was sure that I could

answer the challenge of his presence because I knew

the issues I was teaching. Maybe at that time I began to

become convinced of this obvious thing. A teacher has

to teach, but in order to teach he has to know what he

or she teaches. Maybe I learned that so clearly at that

moment, many years before today.

When I finished the class the director smiled and

59

Formative Years

said to me, "Please come to my office." I went with secu

rity, do you see? I knew that he could not say, you are

bad. I was sure about that. I went with confidence and

he said to me: "Paulo, congratulations. You are a very

good teacher. You give a beautiful class. But I have to

ask you to lower the level of your teaching because I am

afraid that some very young students could not under

stand well. Next time please ask them to feel free to tell

you whether they need some explanation ."

So I said, "Oh, thank you very much."

He said, "Go ahead, you are very good."

This confirmed something that I already knew, that I

was right, that I was becoming competent, and it taught

me to be serious. It is necessary, however, to point out

that in order for teachers to improve their competency,

they need to be respected and they need good salaries.

I understand that in many situations in Latin America

the teachers cannot teach seriously because they receive

such a low salary. Teachers cannot rest because they

have to work too much, and they are not able to read

when they get to a level of exhaustion. It's impossible.

Because of that, I think that the teachers should fight.

I am sure that the duty and right of the teachers. be

cause they have to be serious teachers, is to organize

themselves in order to fight against discrimination and

low wages from many kinds of governments . The only

way teachers have to demonstrate to the students that

they are serious sometimes is to fight-to fight in order

to get a better salary and then to begin to become more

competent.

But let's come back to my story. Teaching secondary

60

Formative Years

school was then an adventure. It was a beautiful thing

for me. At some point, I began to discover that one of

the main reasons why the students could learn with me

and l iked my class was that I respected them, no matter

their age (very young) . I respected them and I respected

their mistakes, their errors, and their knowledge. They

knew something before coming to the school, and it was

important for me in teaching syntax of Portuguese lan

guage to know what they knew, because they came to

the school with a linguistic competency. We don't teach

any language to anyone. Children become competent

in a language. After that we can teach the grammar.

But language we experience, we create. So I respected

the students very much.

I also discovered another thing that was very impor

tant to me afterward, that I had authority but I was

not authoritarian. I remember that not even one of the

students ever left the classroom without telling me or

asking me in a very respectful, polite way every time.

I began to understand at a very young age that on one

hand the teacher as a teacher is not the student. The

student as the student is not the teacher. I began to

perceive that they are different but not necessarily an

tagonistic. The difference is precisely that the teacher

has to teach, to experience, to demonstrate authority and

the student has to experience freedom in relation to the

teacher 's authority. I began to see that the authority of

the teacher is absolutely necessary for the development

of the freedom of the students , but if the authority of

the teacher goes beyond the limits authority has to have

in relation to the students' freedom, then we no longer

Formative Years

have authority. We no longer have a freedom. We have

authoritarianism. I began to learn these things when I

was very young teaching Portuguese language.

After teaching Portuguese language for five or six

years , Elza and I met each other. We got married and we

have five children and eight grandchildren today. Un

fortunately I no longer have Elza. Elza is no longer here

in the world. My friends say that she is here. I accept

their kindness, but she is not . It's different. Elza exer

cised a fantastic influence on me, and I would say that

she is one of the demarcations in my life. I should say

"before Elza," "after Elza," because she was a fantastic

educator, very young but very, very good, full of notions

and feeling and knowledge of what she was doing. In

a preschool, also in the primary school, she was very

good in l i teracy for children. I think for that reason that

Elza was better than l. Of course, I think that she was

a great educator. In meeting Elza and loving Elza and

getting married to Elza, her influence made me much

more conscious of what I was doing.

I discovered, because of Elza, that what I was doing

in teaching Portuguese was something more than teach

ing, it was precisely education. I don't want to separate

teaching from education. That does not make sense.

What I want to say is that objectively when I was teach

ing Portuguese language I was educating. But I did not

know it, and it was Elza who enlightened me concern

ing that. Suddenly I began to put together old dreams

and to recognize the l inks among them. It became very

clear to me that I had a taste for asking questions , for

knowing, for teaching, and I was sure that I was an edu-

Formative Years

cator or that I would have to become an educator. This

was Elza's first great influence on me because Elza, in

fact, exercised an extraordinary influence on me from

the existential point of view and from the intellectual

point of view. She was an "artist" whose respect for

me shaped who I am. In respecting me, she developed

many aspects of my profile. Because of that, without

Elza possibly I would not be here speaking about this

possibly, but I am not quite sure. It's possible that I

would not be here now if it was not for the love for l ife

she had . The love for me, for the kids, for the people,

for the students . Her courage of creating things never

stopped. I t's important. I would like to say that I am not

a widower full of nostalgia. I am analyzing some mo

ments in the process of my development, and because

of that I think about her influence and her suggestions.

I stopped teaching syntax, and I went to work in

1 946 in a new organization that was created in Recife.

There I began to get in touch again with workers . Work

ing there in the sector of education, I began to learn

lots of things l ike Myles learned when he began to get

contact with workers. He said something that I also will

say, more or less in the same way. As a young academic,

my conviction was that we had knowledge , we had good

knowledge , and the people did not have this.

Subjectively I was not reactionary because I was be

coming engaged more and more in favor of the inter

ests of the working class. One other point , related to

this one, in which I was mistaken and influenced by

the elitist and authoritarian ideology, has to do with the

method I used to teach workers. That is, I went to the

Formative Years

people and I spoke to them without ever speaking with

them. Look, I am convinced that a progressive edu

cator cannot speak exclusively with the people. He or

she has also to speak, from time to time, to the people.

It has to do with the directiveness of education, and

directiveness does not mean necessarily authoritarian

ism or manipulation. Ed�cation has the directivity be

cause education has objectives, you see. Education is

not neutral , and because of that it has directiveness . I

learned like Myles, no? He said some beautiful things .

He said, more or less, it took time. Yes, it took time.

One of the things that men like us, like lots of other

people we know in the world-one of the things that

we can do in order to help the younger generation is to

tell them our stories and to speak about-

M Y L E S : How long it takes.

PAU LO : How long it takes. Maybe they will shorten their time

to learn.

M Y L E S : One thing about learning is that you have to enjoy

it . You said to me in Los Angeles that you wanted to

become as a little child like I was. Picasso says it takes a

long time to grow young, and I say it takes even longer

to become as a little child. So that's the height we are

striving for.

PAU LO : And Myles, the more we become able to become a

child again, to keep ourselves childlike, the more we can

understand that because we love the world and we are

open to understanding, to comprehension, that when

we kill the child in us, we are no longer. Because of

that, in Los Angeles my daughter Magdalena said about

Myles, "He's a baby !"

Formative Years

MYLES: I fell in love with her right there.

PAU L O: Yes. Coming back to my question, it took time for

me to learn that the people with whom I was working

already had lots of knowledge. The question for me

was exclusively to understand what were their levels of

knowledge and how did they know. I could not under

stand. Once again Elza was my educator. I remember

that she used to come with me every night when I had

meetings with workers, inside of Recife or out of Re

cife. Once a month in each place we had educational

programs with teachers and parents. It was a beautiful

experience. I learned how to discuss with the people. I

learned how to respect their knowledge, their beliefs,

their fears, their hopes, their expectations, their lan

guage. It took time and many meetings.

After one program, Elza and I were coming back

home and Elza said to me, with a delicate understand

ing, "Look, Paulo, it does not work like this ." And I

asked her : "What did I do? I spoke serious about serious

things." She said : "Yes, of course. All you said is right,

but did you ask them whether they were interested in

listening to you speak about that? You give the answers

and the questions." You see then? (Look, I would like

to make very clear that when I speak about Elza it is

not from nostalgia. I t's a question of making justice.)

And I said , "But Elza." She said: "No, Paulo. You have

to change. You cannot grasp the interest of the people

while speaking with this language you spoke. It is the

language you have to speak at university but not here."

Of course it took time, like Myles said . Even though

I had an assistant, Elza, helping me, it took time, but

Formative Years

it was through committing these mistakes that I finally

learned nevermore to forget that we cannot do any

thing if we don't respect the people. We cannot educate

if we don't start-and I said start and not stay-from

the levels in which the people perceive themselves, their

relationships with the others and with reality, because

this is precisely what makes their knowledge. In order

for one to know, it's just necessary to be alive, then

people know. The question is to know what they know

and how they know, to learn how to teach them things

which they don't know and they want to know. The

question is to know whether my knowledge is neces

sary, because sometimes it is not necessary. Sometimes

it is necessary but the need is not yet perceived by the

people . Then one of the tasks of the educator is also to

provoke the discovering of need for knowing and never

to impose the knowledge whose need was not yet per

ceived. Sometimes the need is just felt-is that right?

but not yet perceived. There is a difference.

T H I R D PA RTY: Right . Would you say that this is something

that you have to figure out, that you have to reinvent or

figure out every moment that you're in a relationship

with a student?

PAU LO : Yes. I would tell you that a good teacher is the

teacher who, in being or becoming permanently com

petent, is permanently aware of surprise and never,

never stops being surprised. Do you see? One of the

worst things in life is to stop being surprised. This is

why Myles is a child ! Always we have to look. Today sud

denly a flower is the reason for your surprise. Tomor-

66

Formative Years

row, it may be the same flower, just with a different

color, because of the age of the flower.

"Pockets of hope": Literacy and citizenship

THIRD PARTY: Please talk about Highlander's citizenship

schools and the early literacy work in Recife. What's

striking me is that you were both in different places

working with community groups, Paulo working in Re

cife and Myles working in Johns Island, both finding

new ways of doing literacy based on a concept of social

change. How did you arrive at that process?

M Y L E S : In the process of talking about the Citizenship

Schools, I would like not just a comparison but an

evaluation of how we went at it . First, we had been

having workshops at Highlander in the fifties about

the problem of segregation in the south. Highlander

always tried to remind people that they are part of the

world and they have responsibilities and opportunities

to do things outside their own communities. I t's rather

amusing in a way, and significant, that the Citizenship

School idea first was talked about at a workshop on

the United Nations. Esau Jenkins, a black man from

Johns Island , South Carolina, came to Highlander with

Septima Clark, a schoolteacher who had come to High

lander herself from Charleston, South Carolina.

Esau Jenkins said at this international workshop that

he thought it was fine to talk about the world but that he

had problems at home. His problem was to get help on

teaching the people on his island to read well enough to

Formative Years

pass the voter registration requirement exam that was

given by white registrars who were very unsympathetic

to blacks voting and used the restriction of literacy as

a means of keeping blacks from voting. He said he'd

been trying to teach people to read as they rode on his

bus. He had a bus service about thirty or forty miles

into the city from the island, bringing domestics, fac

tory workers, his black neighbors to work. On the bus

he had a captive audience, and he tried to teach them

to learn about reading on the trip. He was the recog

nized leader in that island in terms of problems of the

people, and l ike a lot of black people he preached every

once in a while.

One of the things Highlander had always done was

to say to people : "Highlander's our base, but if you try

to do something and need some help, we'll respond to

your request for help. We won't go into anybody's com

munity or organization as an expert, but we will come

in and try to help you with your problem." So it was in

response to his invitation that we went to Johns Island.

I decided I 'd spend some time with Esau and with

Septima and try to learn what I could about Johns

Island. I lived down there with Esau for awhile, two

or three weeks at a time. I would talk to the people at

work, fishing, and growing rice. They still grew some

rice, which they harvested by hand, but most of them

even though they all had little pieces of land-most of

them made their living working in the big plantations

or in the city. They were dependent on working for

somebody else for a living. They spoke Gullah. a mix-

68

Formative Years

ture of English and African, maybe a little French, and

I had to get my ears accustomed to understanding it .

While I was trying to get acquainted, I explored

the past efforts for people to get literacy training. get

schooling. I found out from Septima, who had taught

there, that they 'd had very, very poor schools, and I

found out from my own investigation that there had

been people trying to teach literacy classes on that

island for years, since the Civil War. I met two people

who told me that they couldn't get anybody in the island

interested in learning to read and write, that they had

tried for years. They 'd start and drop out, and there

was no interest. I found unspent federal money and

unspent state money for l iteracy.

So obviously there was a problem and it was quite

simple. Literacy workers were not treating these people

with any kind of respect. The kind of programs they

were offering was an insult to them. These older people,

adults, had to sit in little desks for children. The chil

dren laughed and called them "granddaddy longlegs ."

So there was a good clue as to what not to do. That

started me on a l ine of thinking that was very simple .

How do you treat people with respect? How do you do

a program that treats people with respect? I was sure

that th,�y would have the motivation . It's easy enough to

get people to want to vote who have never had a right

to vote and who have been denied that right, and in a

place where there's mostly black people , to eventually

have a majority of the vote.

So the basis of the program was one that would

69

Formative Years

respect people. It became quite obvious that the edu

cation would have to be done in an out-of-school set

ting because the schools were a "granddaddy-Ionglegs"

memory. So the first thing to do was to try to find a

way to have educational programs outside the school

ing system, and the next thing was to find out what

kind of people would be good teachers in a school that

showed respect . To be on the safe side-although Sep

tima differed with me a little bit about this and she was

a schoolteacher (you might have differed too, Paulo)

we finally decided we wouldn't have any certified teach

ers, anybody who had been trained as teachers. Trained

teachers would have to be thinking in terms of what

they had learned, methodology, and they would iden

tify illiterate adults with illiterate children. They would

have a tendency to want to teach the same subject mat

ter in the same way that they taught children.

Then there was the problem of the tendency of

white people everywhere to dominate black people. You

could eliminate that problem very simply by not having

any white people teaching. These conditions for learn

ing were the first things that we agreed on. When I say

we, I mean Esau, Septima, and me.

The other thing we talked about in advance was what

the people would learn to read, since they had only

a short time to do it. We couldn't start out with little

simple things, simple words, because they had to learn

to read in a short period of time a very long, wordy

section of the South Carolina law that had words in

it they 'd never heard of before, words that most of us

had difficulty pronouncing. We had to start closer to

Formative Years

where the people had to end up in a short period . That

meant that we'd have to find some way for their motiva

tion to enable them to grasp rapidly rather complicated

sentences and big words.

Who can we get to teach? Bernice Robinson, a young

black woman, Septima's niece, had been to Highlander

and was impressed. She'd worked in New York and

other places, but she was back in Charleston. She hadn't

quite finished high school, but she was very bright. She

said Highlander is the place we can really learn. "If

there's anything I could ever do to help Highlander,

just let me know."

So we said : "You can help by teaching other people.

You've got part of a high-school education"-she was

way beyond that in her thinking-"but most of all you

care for people. You know how to get along with people

and you inspire people. You know you don't feel su

perior." So she finally reluctantly agreed . For the first

time in her life, she thought of herself as teaching

others, but she had been teaching people things. She

had been teaching young people how to sew. She ran a

black hairdresser's establishment, a beauty parlor, but

unlike white beauty parlors, a black beauty parlor is a

cultural center. It's a place where people come to talk

about things, and in that economy that's a status posi

tion. She was sophisticated in a lot of ways. But her

willingness to do that was based on her love for her own

people and wanting to be helpful.

Bernice started out without any plans or anything.

We wanted her to get acquainted with the situation and let her own thinking come out . I know Septima wanted

Formative Years

to give her a lesson plan to start with, and I objected

to that and Esau agreed with me. Bernice started by

telling students : "I 'm not a teacher. I really don't know

why they wanted me to do this , but I'm here and I' l l

learn with you. I 'll learn as I go along." That was her

attitude.

After she got started, she called me and asked for a

poster, the Declaration of Human Rights, that was up

on the wall when she was a student at Highlander to

use as a primer. That was her idea, because she was be

ginning to understand that she had to challenge these

people . Although there were big words, it wasn't just

big words that they had to learn to read in the South

Carolina Constitution. At that time Highlander had a

statement of purpose that told what Highlander was

about . Bernice thought that had some good ideas about

democracy and about citizenship, so she asked for a

copy of it too. That was one of the things they learned

to read. It was that level of material that she used in

her teaching, but mostly it was just getting them to

practice writing their names, writing, filling out money

orders. They wanted very practical sort of things, so

she built the program around what they wanted, what

they asked for.

In the meantime they were all trying to get the

chance to vote because she organized that class of about

twenty-five people into a community organization. It

wasn't a l iteracy class. It was a community organiza

tion. They were already talking about what they were

going to do when they got to vote. They were talking

about using their citizenship to do something, and they

Formative Years

named it the Citizenship School, not a l iteracy school.

That helped with the motivation.

She had more people who ended her class than

started . Eighty percent of the total number passed our

examination. Our examination was for them to go down

to the courthouse and register to vote. So when the reg

istration board said they had the right to vote, we said

they'd passed the examination. Eighty percent of them

were able to do that.

We thought only in terms of one school, and if that

worked, maybe we'd do it again right there. Within

a week or two, they asked for other schools in other

parts of the island, and Bernice ran another school. We

hadn't thought beyond what she could do herself. But

by that time demands were coming in so fast that we de

cided to let other people do the teaching and not just let

Bernice do all the teaching. It was getting beyond our

original expectations. So what we did was to have these

other teachers apprentice to her. We hadn't organized

a system of spreading the Citizenship School idea.

Before the third school was over, there was request

for a Citizenship School by the people in Edisto, the

neighboring island, and a request for Daufuskie, still

further south, down in Georgia, as well as other re

quests . We set up a kind of a training program for Citi

zenship School teachers at Highlander. Bernice was the

head of it and Septima was an adviser. By that time Sep

tima had been put in charge of directing the organizing

of Citizenship Schools. Bernice selected her own staff

to train new teachers. She picked four teachers who

had been apprenticed to her, the ones that she thought

73

Formative Years

would be the best to train other people. In other words,

from Bernice on, there was nobody who wasn't trained

by the people that Bernice trained. So we kept passing

on from person to person as much as you can pass on.

The only person who had any training in education

the only person with a college education, for example

was Septima, who was the director of the whole pro

gram.

That was the framework in which we set up the

schools. The program started in January of 1 957, and

by 196 1 , there had been over four hundred teachers

trained, and there'd been over four thousand students .

The voters in these areas had gone up about 300 per

cent . It was a success in terms of what it set out to

be. We spoke earlier of the idea of Highlander being

one in which we dealt with a very few people inten

sively, and their job was to go back to their communities

and multiply what they had learned . Well this was our

most successful multiplication of an idea. It spread in

all directions because it had a lot of dynamism in it .

And as it went along, the original idea that Bernice

had developed became only part of the procedures that

we used because everybody was adding. Some would

come from the teachers, some would come from the

students. Their program was being enriched, and it got

more and more effective as it went along. There wasn't

a single Citizenship School teacher who was connected

with Highlander. They weren't on Highlander staff.

The only people on the Highlander staff were Septima

Clark and Bernice Robinson. The rest of the people

were on their own.

74

Formative Years

Now this program later on got so big that it was big

ger than everything else we were doing at Highlander.

It was an inexpensive program. We didn't pay teachers.

There were no salaries involved. We financed the train

ing but we didn't finance any of the actual teaching. The

community was responsible for that . And none of them

worked for pay. They were all volunteers , black people

teaching black people . That organization became so

big, spread so fast, and was involving so much of our

time and attention that we decided we'd do like we had

done before. We'd had two or three other programs that

we had evolved back in the labor period that got big,

and unions took them over. We didn't want to spend

time on operating a successful program. Anybody can

do that. We'd try to experiment and develop something

else. We decided we wanted to spin off the Citizen

ship Schools. It was well enough established that some

body else could do it. At that time we brought Andrew

Young, who was later U.S. ambassador to the United

Nations and is now the mayor of Atlanta, to Highlander

to coordinate the spread of this program. Before he got

here, Martin Luther King asked if we would work out

a program for Southern Christian Leadership Confer

ence. Septima kept telling him about the Citizenship

School program. At first I didn't think that would nec

essarily be the best program for them, but later on King

got interested in that program, and I got to thinking

maybe after all it was the best program for them, and

it would certainly solve our problem, getting it off oUT

hands. And after quite a bit of discussion, they decided that they would make that their official program. When

75

Formative Years

they did that, Andy and Septima decided they would

go with the program and help establ ish it in SCLC,

Southern Christian Leadership Conference . They had

a much broader base than we had. By that time the civil

rights movement was beginning to get started. It moved

from Montgomery to Atlanta, and the idea was spread

ing. The Citizenship Schools became the program for

the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and

they made adaptations but it stayed pretty much the

same program.

Andy Young and other people think of it as kind

of basic to the civil rights movement, and I 'think it's

one of the basics, but I think there are others. That

program succeeded at a time that no other literacy pro

grams were succeeding in the United States. And at the

time, when it cost as much to teach somebody to read

and write as it did to send them to Harvard for a year,

we were doing it for less than one hundred dollars a

person in actual costs. It was done in a three-months'

period on the average, two long nights a week, and the

success stayed about the same in terms of 75, 80 per

cent of people going through the program being able

to register to vote.

Now there's no question it worked. It worked and

spread . I'd like to talk about what you did, but I'm inter

ested in what the elements were, how you would see

these elements that I 've been talking about.

PAULO: Well , first of al l , I think that it's interesting for us

as educators, to think again and again about the politi

cal atmosphere, the social atmosphere, cultural atmo

sphere in which we work as educators. It was in your

Formative Years

experience, we can see that. I don't believe in programs

for adult l iteracy that just are organized by some educa

tors in some place and afterwards are offered to illiter

ates all over the country. It does not work. I remember

that in 1975 there was an international meeting, in Per

sepolis, sponsored by U NE S CO in order to analyze some

reports made by U NE S CO , evaluations of programs all

over the world in adult l iteracy. I was in that meeting

with Soviets , Americans, Latin Americans, Europeans,

Asians, the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Koreans. One of

the conclusions that was put in the final report (State

ment of Persepolis, if I'm not mistaken) was that the

programs of adult literacy have been efficient in soci

eties in which suffering and change created a special

motivation in the people for reading and writing. It

was before the Nicaraguan revolution. The Nicaraguan

revolution was the last example for that. The program

Myles talked about was made without revolution. I say

no. I am not making reference exclusively to revolution

that gets power. The political connotation, the aspira

tion of freedom, of creativity was there among the black

people. That is, the motivation was there among the

people.

The people wanted and needed to read and to write,

precisely in order to have more of a possibility to be

themselves . That is, the people wanted to write and

to read at that time because they knew that they were

being prevented from voting because they could not

read and write words. Then we can see the coinci

dence: on one hand, the people needing, wanting; on

the other hand, you and the team, open to the needs

77

Formative Years

of the people. Because of that , you could start with

out too much preoccupation concerning methods and

techniques and materials because you had the prin

ciple ingredient, which was the desire of the people,

the political motivation of the people. For the people

at that moment, getting reading and writing was really

an important instrument and also a sign of respect for

them, self-respect.

Another thing that I feel is very important in your

explanation and report of this beautiful history is how

Bernice multiplied the program-that is, how it was

possible, starting from Bernice, to multiply Bernice

without courses with lots of theoretical introductions!

This is one of the terrible things we do. Sometimes we

put fifty people to be trained in how to teach illiterates,

and we spend fourteen days speaking about different

theories and matters, and the teachers cannot experi

ence it . Then the last day we have a lunch together,

and the next day the teachers meet the illiterates and

don't know how to work. In this case Bernice prepared

for future educators by teaching in their presence. It's

beautiful because she taught through her example.

One thing is not clear for me. I think that you said

two years later there were about two hundred teachers.

Did all these two hundred come to Bernice or did the

ones who were trained by Bernice multiply also?

M Y LE S : After two or three training programs run by Bernice

and her staff, the demand became so great . Up to that

time there had been no manual written and no methods

written, just word of mouth. So many people were ask

ing about it that they decided they'd write something

Formative Years

up. It was also decided that we would tape a five-day

training session. Bernice didn't tell her teachers what

we were going to do with it. She said just go ahead and

pay no attention to it. We were afraid that if we told

them we were going to tum this into a manual, they 'd

become self-conscious. We just wanted them to teach

the way they had been teaching and the people learning

the way they 'd been learning. Transcribing the tapes

and making the manual was a long tedious job done by

Ann Romasco, who was on staff at the time.

Now we figured that would be as authentic as you

could get . We made a manual out of what they had

already said. No one wrote or spoke anything specifi

cally for the manual . They were saying it to teach and

help peers learn, because this was kind of peer teach

ing. (These people who were the teachers were not any

better educated than the people they were teaching.

Quite often the people who were learning had a much

better education than the people who were teaching,

but they were not our Citizenship School teachers .) The

transcribed material was put together in about a thirty

page manual. It was the only thing that was ever written

while the program was at Highlander.

After the program went to the S CL C and began

spreading so fast, they put out other kinds of manuals

and study guides. Septima continued to work on that,

but we didn't want to get away from the creativity and

the originality that stemmed from Bernice. So as long

as it was at Highlander, there wasn't any disconnection.

Now when it got away from Highlander, when it got

broader, then they not only used manuals but the idea

79

Formative Years

had spread so widely in the South that people were

beginning to start Citizenship Schools of their own.

That's when I was really excited. I was down in Mis

sissippi, back in the country one day, and a woman came

up to me and she said, "What do you do?" [ said, "Well,

I'm a teacher." She said : "I 'm a teacher, too. [ teach

at my house. I'm a Citizenship School teacher. Do you

know what that is?" I said , "Tell us." She said : "Well ,

you know [ started this. This is my idea. We're going to

make citizens out of people. I'm teaching them to read

and write . [ went to the fourth grade, and I'm teaching

people to read and write . When I get through with this

one, some of my neighbors want to start one." [ said,

"That's just a wonderful , wonderful idea. Do you think

anybody else knows about this idea?" She said, "No, but

they will ."

She had taken this idea and internalized it, and here

she was starting her own. I was so excited about this. I

asked her if she was having any problems of any kind.

She said that they didn't have enough pencils and paper

and things like that. I gave her ten dollars to buy pen

cils. She needed no more help than that . She needed

no white guy, no money, nobody else to come. All she

needed was a little money for pencils , and that was all

she needed. Now that was when I felt the program was

successful, when it was no longer even part of an orga

nization .

PAU LO : Myles, two questions. The first is , do you remember

how Bernice worked with the Declaration of Human

Rights in order to make it possible for the illiterates to

begin to grasp how to read and to write?

80

Formative Years

MYL E S : She read it to them and she told them that she had

seen it at Highlander. It said what she believed and

some of the things that she thought they believed, and

she thought they 'd like it. So she read it and they re

sponded to it , of course , because it spoke in terms they

could understand, international world freedom, l ibera

tion . They wanted to be able to read it because they

liked it and because it made a lot of sense to them. She

didn't try to carry everybody along, to have everyone

read it. She didn't work on the basis that everybody

had to be doing the same thing. They were doing what

was interesting. And she said in the end they'd all want

to learn to read it because if some of them did it , the

others would want to do it . So she just took the ones

that wanted to do it, and they learned as much as they

could on it and then the others came in. It wasn't just

something that was done, and then that was a class,

and then the next time it was something else. It was

mixed in with learning to read and write their name,

filling out money orders, doing a little of a lot of things.

She wouldn't try to have a plan for it. It stayed kind of

spontaneous.

T H I RD PA R T Y : Did she break the words down and build

other words or did she teach the reading word-for

word?

M Y L E S : No. She didn't do that. She didn't know anything

about that .

PAU L O : It's not a syllabical language. After some time the

people could read, could write. Do you see the power

of interest , of motivation?

M Y L E S : I 'm not suggesting she couldn't have done better if

8 1

Formative Years

she'd known a lot more things and had a lot more ideas,

not at all. She did well enough without knowing these

things.

PAU LO : And did you think about some postliteracy pro-

gram?

M Y LE S : Oh yes.

PAU LO : Tell me something about it .

M Y L E S : Well, after the people were able to vote, EsauJenkins

who was the father of this idea, said , "We're going to

have to have a second stage program." He called it a

second stage. "We're going to have to follow up on the

l iteracy schools, on the Citizenship Schools, and we've

got to help people understand how they can use their

vote more intelligently and get them interested in run

ning for office. We got to talking about what we were

going to use our power for when we get it, schools,

health. We want to talk about the overall struggle for

justice." The civil rights movement was beginning to

take shape, and he wanted to be part of that . Now

there's a study made of this program by Carl Tjerand

sen.* He was executive secretary of a foundation that

gave us some money and he wrote in detail. I guess his

study has more detail of this than anyone else's , and he

describes the second stage.

*

You know what it reminds me of. It reminds me

of popular education following the literacy crusade in

Nicaragua. It's a step beyond, using the same people.

Carl Tjerandsen, Education for Citiunship: A Foundation's Experience, (Santa Cruz. Calif.: Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation, 1980); see ex

cerpt in Convergence 15. no. 6 (1983): 10-22.

Formative Years

No, that was just the beginning. There wasn't any

thought of that being an end in itself. It had a purpose,

but reading and writing wasn't the purpose . Being a

citizen was the purpose. So once you could read and

write, then the class moved on to other things, and

incidentally (and this was incidental because it wasn't

planned but it doesn't mean it's not important), they

had to keep on reading and writing to do the things

that the second stage required them to do.

PAU LO : It should be interesting if it was possible sometime

for Highlander to bring together some of those who

learned how to read and write thirty, thirty-five years

ago. I think that it should be a beautiful moment.

Last month I met four ex-illiterates from the first

work I did in Brazil . I had lunch with them and a friend

of mine who worked with me at Sao Paulo at that time in

1964 before the coup d'etat. They still read and write.

I love to see the coincidence between our experi

ences, Myles , but it's not the same. The circumstances

were different. The culture is different. The histori

cal moment was different. I was in Brazil, Myles here.

Without knowing anything about Myles, I was increas

ing an old search that I had started in the fifties. In

1961, specifically, I was searching for something in the

field of literacy. In the fifties I had started to work

seriously with people, with workers, peasants, fishers ,

trying to learn from them how to work with them. Elza

used to go with me to every place, and she watched

me working. Afterward, she made corrections and she

called my attention to ways I could improve, and we dis

cussed. I said no, I am not wrong, and she said yes , you

Formative Years

are ! (Sometimes two days later I would discover that

I was .) In the fifties I was learning how to work with

people. I was thinking critically about education, gen

eral education . I was making some theoretical reflec

tions about education. I was thinking about what I did

as a teacher of syntax, for example. In the beginning

of 1 960, I began to look more directly, specifically, for

something in the field of literacy, of adult literacy. One

of my political motivations was that illiterates could not

vote in Brazil. Here in the United States, illiteracy was

a good justification for racial discrimination. In Brazil

it was also, but above all it revealed class-social class

discrimination . In Brazil, whether white or black, the

illiterate could not vote. Now the illiterates can vote but

cannot be voted on, cannot run for office. I t's a contra

diction . They have the right to vote, but they cannot

run for election. One of my dreams was fighting against

this injustice, to make it possible for illiterates to learn

quickly how to write and to read, and simultaneously

learn also the reasons why the society works in this or

that way. My main preoccupation was this.

There is another coincidence. I also started this work

outside of the schools, nevertheless without denying the

importance of the schools . I remember that , for ex

ample, instead of naming a school for adults, I named

the space and the students and the teacher "Circle of

Culture" in order to avoid a name that sounds to me

too much like traditional school. Instead of calling the

teacher "teacher," I named him or her "coordinator

of discussion, of debate, dialogue." And the students I

called "participants of discussion ."

Formative Years

It's interesting also because, for example, Bernice

started using the Declaration of Human Rights. Look,

I was not there, but I am sure that at the moment in

which Bernice showed the Declaration of the Human

Rights to the firs� group and she said what it was, I am

sure that there was a discussion about that.

M Y L E S : Oh yes .

PAU LO : I 'm absolutely sure that the problems of human

rights, discrimination, racial exploitation, l iberation,

freedom-all these things-came up. We were not there

in the exact moment at which she worked, but I am sure

that there was that, precisely because the people came to

Bernice's course because they wanted their affirmation,

because they needed to fight in favor of their dignity.

The Declaration of Human Rights ought to have been

to them a fantastic proof, a justification that they were

right in fighting. They were right in wanting to get the

right to vote. In the last analysis , in my terminology,

Bernice used the Declaration of Human Rights as a

codification . It was, yes , a codification, and when she

showed the declaration to them, the debating started. I

am so sure that I speak like this. The debating started,

and based on your experience today, I think that you

agree with me when I say something that I did not see

but that I think happened.

M Y L E S : Well , you're right on that. I mentioned the fact that

they organized themselves as a community organiza

tion. They continued to meet after that as a community

organization.

PAU LO : Yes.

M Y L E S : The teaching stopped and the community educa-

Formative Years

tion started . The blacks were the ones who named it

a school. The blacks were the ones who called people

"teacher." They called it a Citizenship School, and they

had a teacher. To them that was real education. That

was their terminology, not mine or Bernice's .

PAU LO : It is beautiful. I am seeing now as if I were there

in that exact moment: that by discussing with Bernice

some points of the declaration , they were reading the

world and not yet the words of the declaration. They

were starting a different reading of the world mediated

by the Declaration of Human Rights and possibly in this

rereading, through the understanding of the Declara

tion of Human Rights, they were discovering things,

knowing new knowledge. That is, they were confirm

ing some already known knowledge and knowing some

thing different. In other words, through the experience

with Bernice they were going beyond.

M Y L E S : I remember now that Bernice said some of them

asked, "What does that word mean?" And she'd have to

explain the meaning of some of the words. But she said

they all knew what the total thing meant. She says they

understood it in totality, but they didn't understand

some of the words.

PAU L O : And it is beautiful, this movement. Before writing

the words and reading the words, they were reread

ing their reality and they were preparing themselves to

write the words in order to read them. It's impossible to

read the words without writing them. That is, reading

implies writing. Then at some point they began to do

better. I also used the codifications for that. I used the

codifications differently.

86

Formative Years

THIRD PARTY: Paulo could you talk about how and why you

developed the codifications?

PAULO: Yes it's interesting. I have said something also about

that in other places, where community activists and

students drew pictures to describe their concepts of

education, but I think that it is historical . I have to re

peat. For me the question, theoretically, was like this : I

was convinced that we would have to start from some

very, very concrete piece of people's reality. Inside of

the representation of some aspects of this reality, I

would put the first word or the word that I call the

generative word. In a syllabical language like ours, this

word can be split, and afterward we can make combi

nations with the syllables .

The codification has a task, a role, in the process of

learning and of knowing. It's very interesting how we

worked yesterday in the workshop, where community

activists and students drew pictures to describe their

concepts of education. We used another language, pic

tures, to try to find the normal language that is used.

We drew and then we made codifications. I found it

very interesting.

In my case, the codification works as a challenge, a

challenge to the students and the educator. Then the

codification gives itself or exposes itself to the cogni

tive subjects, to those who are open to know, in order

for them to read the codification without any kind of

word, just a representation of the reality. Precisely be

cause the reality you presented in the codification is the

reality of the students, in looking at the codification,

the students see again what they already know about

Formative Years

reality. Then they speak about what they are seeing,

and in speaking about what they are seeing, they are ex

pressing how, before that moment, they perceived the

reality. Is it clear? Reading the codification leads people

to have a perception of the former perception of the

reality. That is, in some moment I perceive as I was

perceiving before, the same reality that now is being

represented in the codification . In doing that, maybe I

change my perception.

Let us think as an example. Give a camera to several

people and say: "Record what you want to record, and

next week we meet together. The only demand I have is

that each group has to justify to all of us the reasons why

the group preferred to record, for example, the front

of the school , the market, the church." You can dis

cuss with the group, video by video, trying to grasp the

contents of the reality. They were reading through the

camera. They were reading reality through the camera.

The camera is a reader of reality, but now it's necessary

for us to go into deepening the reading made through

the camera in order to put another language in that

and to discuss with the group lots of issues that are be

hind and sometimes hidden. The codification helps the

educators and the students to do that. It is a mediation

to the discussion . Because of that , the codification was

not something to help exclusively the educators . That

is, the codification was not an instrument for helping

the teacher in his or her speech about the content. The

codification is an object to be known, and to the ex

tent that codification represents a part of the concrete

reality, in trying to understand or to describe the codifi-

88

Formative Years

cation, you are again trying to understand the concrete

reality in which you are.

At some point we stop discussing the global aspects,

and we get the word, the generative word. For example,

if the first word is favela (which means slum in English),

you have a picture of a favela with the word written,

favela. After discussing the sociological and political

dimensions of that-they know very well because they

l ive there-you get the word favela and you start a new

job, which is the job of decodifying the word, as you

did, for example, with your experience. This is one of

the advantages of a syllabical language like Portuguese

and Spanish . English is not like this.

MYL E S : No, you can't do that in English .

PAU LO : That is,favela has three syllables. Then you have lots

of possible combinations. Favela makes it possible to cre

ate these twenty or thirty new words on the first night of

the experience. You see the similarities? Bernice used

the declaration as a codification also, in order to discuss

with the people.

•

Bernice talks· about the happiness a woman experi

enced when she could write for the first time. It is as if

I were in Brazil twenty-four years ago. It is as if I were

now in Brazil because I am reading now about explo

sions of happiness among illiterates who have begun to

write and to l ive. It's Latin America also. It's the world.

Descriptions of the Citizenship School may be found in Sandra Bren

neman Oldendorf, "Highlander Folk School and the South Carolina

Sea Island Citizenship Schools: Implications for the Social Studies"

(Diss., University of Kentucky, 1987).

89

Formative Years

Bernice says: "I never will forget the emotion . 1 laughed

when she got up, took the ruler out of my hand, went

up to the board and said 'There is my name. Anna.

There is my last name.' Goose pimples came out all over

me! " What is for me important now in commenting is

this: It's impossible to be an educator without having

the possibility this woman had at this moment, to be

reinvented. Because in the last analysis she was born

again by Anna.

M Y L E S : That's right .

PAU LO : The moment in which Anna discovered her name

has such an importance in our lives. We already forgot

that you are Thorsten and 1 am Paulo. It is obvious for

us, but for the illiterate, it's not obvious. She was Anna.

She continued to be Anna. But at the moment in which

she could write "Anna," she found another dimension

of herself. She found a piece of her identity. There is

another very important thing here that Bernice speaks

about. Sometimes an illiterate used to write an X as if

it were his name. When he really discovered that his

name was the other one, he did not want it. He said,

"No, my name is this." And he rejected the real name

because it was not an X.

M Y L E S : X was his name.

PAU L O : Bernice speaks about how she worked. She says very

clearly that it is very important to get the document, the

authorization for voting [voter registration]. Because of

that, it was very important for the illiterate to learn how

to read and to write and then to take the examination

and to get registered. She says yes, it is very impor

tant, but what is really important is to know why to vote

go

Formative Years

and for whom to vote. When she said that, she became

very clear. Politically speaking, I think that if we take

Bernice's experience of life and of knowing, we see how

practice, when we think of it, really illuminates us and

gives us the possibility to go on. Bernice learned lots of

things in teaching, and she discovered the importance

of what I call constantly "political clarity." The question

was not exclusively to teach how to read and to write

but to challenge future readers concerning how to use

the right to vote.

Perhaps I am naive. In order for us to be more and

more critical we need to recognize some naiveties. But

when we look at the history of human beings, we see

how we in the world are still having to walk a lot in

order to become more human. Because when we think

that these things Myles spoke about, the struggle for

blacks to read and to write; when we read that this fan

tastic man Jenkins , a great educator in being a driver

who created a school in the back of a bus in order for

the people to learn , it was yesterday. Yesterday. At the

same time, in Brazil we had discrimination . I am speak

ing here not as a Brazilian but as a human being just

recognizing how much we have to do still all over the

world in order to try to reinvent the world. It is incred

ible to see how the blacks were and continue to be so

prevented from being.

M Y L E S : I was asked by the state director of adult education,

who is in charge of the literacy program, to do a work

shop with Sue Thrasher here at Highlander, to talk

about the Citizenship School as an example of using a

group approach as against an individual istic approach.

91

Formative Years

He's determined to have the programs in Tennessee

done in groups and not by individual tutoring, and he

was wanting our help in getting people to switch over

from their individualized teaching to group process .

In the workshop, we were struggling all day to find

an equivalent or parallel situation. You can't have the

equivalent of a Cuban situation, Nicaraguan situation ,

or the Highlander situation. There's no equivalency

today to any of those programs. What is it that would

provide this basis for people having the motivation to

learn? How would you use that group process today? It

was really challenging to me to try to discuss with that

group. I was unsuccessful in finding from them what

they would consider equivalence, and I had to end up

just by challenging them to find out what to use as a

basis. They're at a disadvantage in that we were work

ing in really a revolutionary situation. And they 're in

a low ebb-tide situation, where the going practice is to

fall back on telling people that if they learn to read

and write they 'll get ajob. I said , "Anybody that's dumb

enough to believe that is too dumb to learn to read."

But yet they still tell poor people that . Now to get from

that level to a place where you have some kind of group

motivation seems to be the challenge of the day here in

this period. How would you deal with that?

PAU LO : I agree with you. For example, your experience as

well as my experience in the sixties in Brazil did not

happen in the air. They happened in some historical

space, in a context with some special historical , pol iti

cal, social, cultural elements in the atmosphere. Now

possibly you would not get the same results . This does

Formative Years

not mean that you could not get similar results in some

areas of the country, at some times.

In some states of Brazil today we have progressive

governments, and in some municipalities all over the

country we have very good people working seriously. In

all these situations, it i s possible to reorganize adult l it

eracy, to reorganize education and health, lots of popu

lar education in the broader meaning of this word . I

am helping as much as I can in different parts of the

country, but I don't see a possibility today for a national

campaign. The time is changed.

M Y L E S : No, I don't see in this country a national campaign

of significance. The government is trying to launch a

l iteracy campaign without having any reason for it ex

cept that it'd be a good thing if people could become

literate. There could be found pockets in the country

where you could have successful literacy programs, but

just to assume it anywhere and everywhere . . . . I think

the poor and the people who can't read and write have

a sense that without structural changes nothing is worth

really getting excited about. They know much more

dearly than intellectuals do that reforms don't reform.

They don't change anything. They 've been the guinea

pigs for too many programs. Now if you could come to

them with a radical idea-like we were able to tie into in

the Citizenship School program-where they see some

thing significant, they 'd become citizens of the world .

Then they'll identify with that, but not with short-range

limited objectives that they know from experience don't

get them anywhere. They won't invest much time or

energy in it.

93

Formative Years

So to embolden people to act, the challenge has got

to be a radical challenge. It can't be a l ittle simplistic re

form that reformers think will help them. It's got to be

something that they know out of experience could pos

sibly bring about a change. And we sell people like that

short by assuming that they can take a little baby step

and isn't this wonderful. If they can see something that's

challenging, something that they believe would change

things for them, and if they can see a path that they

could move on towards that goal , then I think some

thing can be done. But that kind of analysis doesn't fit

the national situation in any way here in this country.

So it leaves us working with the remnants, leaves us

working with the little pockets of hope and adventur

ism wherever we can find it. That's why I say you can't

have a national l iteracy campaign.

T H I RD P A RT Y : Do YOtA see those pockets of hope now? What

are they?

MYLES: As you've heard me say, I'm not out in the situations

where I know well enough what's going on. Finding the

pockets is not an intellectual process. I t's a process of

being involved. The reason I think Highlander could

function back when there was something happening is

that we were working through our people who came

to Highlander and helping them in getting out in the

field and just dealing with people. Just knowing what's

going on , we were able to sense places where there's a

potential for radical social change. I use the word poten

tial because it wasn't there. But since I 'm not out there,

not in touch with the situation like I was at one time,

I don't know. From reading or talking or hearing any-

94

Formative Years

body talk, I don't see any place now that I would say

you could build a radical program. When I say I don't

know where these pockets are, it doesn't mean that they

aren't there. It means that I 'm not close enough to the

situation, not sensitive enough to it, to find them. I t's

always hard to find.

The only way these pockets can be found is to get

outside the traditional sort of things that everybody else

is doing and identify with these people-in terms of

their deep knowledge-that limited reforms don't help.

I had to spend a long time down in Johns Island before

people would really confide in me and talk to me so I

could get a feel of where they were . I'm sure that in all

times in history there are little places where things are

beginning to develop, but I don't think you can arrive at

that intellectually or by making surveys or taking polls

or things of that kind.

Paulo, you've spent a lot of time in this country.

What's your sense of what I'm talking about? I'm both

pessimistic and optimistic. I think the potential is there,

but I don't think we've found it.

PAU L O : Yes , I agree with you. But I think that after these

hours of talking, we can see easily how education im

plying political decision can never be an act of volun

tarism. Do you see? For me it's very important for this

to be known, to be felt. We need the political decision

for that , but we cannot make it just because we want to.

This is the question of the l imits of education.

M Y L E S : History gets in your way. History gets in your way.

95

C H A P T E R 3

Ideas

"Without practice there's no knowledge"

PAU L O : I ask : Do the people have the right or not, in the

process of taking their history into their hands, to de

velop another kind of language as a dimension of those

who have the power? This question has to do with an

old one. For example, do the people have the right or

not to know better what they already know? Another

question : Do the people have the right or not to partici

pate in the process of producing the new knowledge?

I am sure that a serious process of social transforma

tion of society has to do that. Of course, it impl ies a

change in the way of producing economically. It im

plies a much greater participation of the masses of the

people in the process of power. Then it means to renew

the understanding of power. Of course, I agree with

97

Ideas

Myles that the people have a kind of language that is

organic knowledge . . .

M Y L E S : People's knowledge.

PAU LO : . . . people's knowledge, in which the body has much

more place than in our way of thinking and of knowing.

As progressive teachers and educators, we have first to

get the knowledge about how the people know. You say

it very clearly in your Danish article , Myles . It means

then to understand the way they speak, their syntax,

their semantics . Then secondly we have to invent with

the people the ways for them to go beyond their state of

thinking.

M Y L E S : That's a starting place, not the ending place.

PAU L O : Well, then yes . I t's a starting and not a staying point.

Because of that I come back to the question again of

reading texts . I started also recognizing the fantastic

importance of the way the people think, speak, act

the design of it all. Then I have to understand the ex

perience , the practice of the people. But I also know

that without practice there's no knowledge; at least it's diffi

cult to know without practice. We have to have a certain

theoretical kind of practice in order to know also. But

practice in itself is not its theory. It creates knowledge,

but it is not its own theory.

Secondly, in discussing my practice with the people

as an educator, I have to know something more than

the people know. At least I have to understand better

theoretically what is happening in the people's practice .

Reading is one of the ways I can get the theoreti

cal illumination of practice in a certain moment . If I

don't get that , do you know what can happen? We as

98

Ideas

popular educators begin to walk in a circle, without the

possibility of going beyond the circle, without going be

yond man's theory of why we do not go beyond. Do

you see? It has to do with a very important moment in

theory of knowledge, which is knowing man's moment

of information.

M Y LE S : And a theory of what you're going to do.

PAU LO : Yes. Information can be got through reading a book,

and it can be got through a conversation. That is, I

hope that this conversation between us here can help

tomorrow when it becomes a book, can help a student

in Brazil, Africa, or here, or another country of Latin

America when he or she reads us. Maybe he or she has

a certain problem and says, "Look maybe here is the

explanation of my obstacle. There is a theory."

M Y LE S : Someone criticized Highlander workshops, saying,

''All you do is sit there and tell stories ." Well, if he'd seen

me in the spring planting my garden, he would've said :

"That guy doesn't know how to garden, how to grow

vegetables . I didn't see any vegetables. All I saw was him

putting a little seed in the ground. He's a faker as a gar

dener because he doesn't grow anything. I saw him and

there's nothing there." Well he was doing the same thing

about observing the workshop. It was the seeds getting

ready to start, and he thought that was the whole pro

cess. To me, it's essential that you start where people

are . But if you're going to start where they are and they

don't change , then there's no point in starting because

you're not going anywhere. So while I insist on starting

where people are, that's the only place they could start.

I can start somewhere else. I can start where I am, but

99

Ideas

they've got to start where they are. But then if you don't

have some vision of what ought to be or what they can

become, then you have no way of contributing anything

to the process. Your theory determines what you want

to do in terms of helping people grow. So it's extremely

important that you have a theory about it that helps you

decide.

For example , when I was the director of Highlander

I was involved in deciding who it is we would work with.

To decide who to work with was based on our theory

of who was important . My way of thinking was to ask if

they are people who are working on structural change

or on limited reforms. If they 're working on structural

change and we can find some people there to work with ,

then we'll choose to work with that group. I f we didn't

have that theory of dealing with structural problems in

stead of limited problems, then we would have chosen

the opposite. So there's no way you can keep people

just going around in a circle. Vou can't have a spiral,

you'll just have a circle that stays flat, if you don't have a

theory about where you're going. The problem is where

does that theory come from. Is that a valid theory? The

only way you can answer that is to test it out, as far as

I know.

PAU L O : The educator must know in favor of whom and in

favor of what he or she wants . That means to know

against whom and against what we are working as edu

cators. I don't believe in the kind of education that

works in favor of humanity. That is, it does not exist

in "humanity." It is an abstraction. Humanity for me is

1 00

Ideas

Mary, Peter, John, very concrete. Then I need to know

in whose favor I am trying to work. It means the politi

cal clarity that the educator has to have. Respecting the

knowledge of the people for me is a political attitude

consistent with the political choice of the educator if he

or she thinks about a different kind of society. In other

words, I cannot fight for a freer society if at the same

time I don't respect the knowledge of the people.

To repeat myself, I would say that we have to go be

yond the common sense of the people, with the people.

My quest is not to go alone but to go with the people.

Then having a certain scientific understanding of how

the structures of society work, I can go beyond the

common-sense understanding of how the society works

-not to stay at this level but , starting from this, to go

beyond. Theory does that.

M Y L E S : Theory does that only if it's authentic.

PAU L O : Yes, yes, but the theory is always becoming. For ex

ample, you started this morning talking about how you

are constantly changing. Nevertheless you are the same.

This is precisely-

M Y L E S : Dialectical.

PAU L O : Yes, yes, yes ! This IS precise because knowledge

always is becoming. That is , if the act of knowing has his

toricity, then today 's knowledge about something is not

necessarily the same tomorrow. Knowledge is changed

to the extent that reality also moves and changes. Then

theory also does the same. It's not something stabilized,

immobilized. You are right!

1 01

Ideas

"Is it possible just to teach biology? to

M Y L E S : When I first started thinking about the relationship

of learning and social change. it had nothing to do with

Highlander. It was years earlier when I was debating

with myself this whole idea of neutrality. Academicians.

politicians. all the people that are supposed to be guid

ing this country say you've got to be neutral. As soon

as I started looking at that word neutral and what it

meant, it became very obvious to me there can be no

such thing as neutrality. It's a code word for the existing

system. It has nothing to do with anything but agree

ing to what is and will always be-that's what neutrality

is. Neutrality is jw;t following the crowd. Neutrality is just

being what the system asks us to be. Neutrality, in other

words, was an immoral act. I was thinking in religious

terms then. It was to me a refusal to oppose injustice

or to take sides that are unpopular. It's an excuse, in

other words. So I discarded the word neutrality before

I even started thinking much about educational ideas .

Of course, when I got more into thinking about educa

tional ideas and about changed society, it became more

and more obvious that you've got to take sides. You

need to know why you take sides ; you should be able to

justify it. And those were early learnings, so that cleared

that way.

The next step is to figure out what to do. As I said

earlier, I decided long before that I wasn't interested in

being good, I was interested in being good for something.

That leads you to make an analysis of society. That's

when I was helped by some of the things I learned from

102

Ideas

Marxism about analysis and about the practical use of

the whole business of conflict , how you deal with the

dichotomies or seeming dichotomies. That was an act

of trying to learn how to analyze society. I started trying

to learn about society so I could make a moral judg

ment, a rational judgment. That was the basis of finally

deciding that I was going to work with poor people,

working people . That's the basis of deciding if I was

going to side with what we later on started calling Third

World countries. I didn't have any names for them but

it was the same, my position hasn't changed.

I remember I got some clarification from Niebuhr's

lectures, which ended up in his book Moral Man in Im

moral Society . I was in his class when he was working

on it, and he practiced his values on us. So I was influ

enced by the thinking, the clarification that went into

the book-that it's the structures of society that we've

got to change. We don't change men's hearts. So it was

in Niebuhr's class that I first really clarified in my own

mind, my own thinking, the idea that it doesn't make a

great deal of difference what the people are; if they 're

in the system, they're going to function like the sys

tem dictates that they function. From then on I've been

more concerned with structural changes than I have

with changing hearts of people .

PAULO : Neutrality. This is why neutrality is the best way for

one to hide his or her choice, you see. If you are not

interested in proclaiming your choices, then you have

to say that you are neutral. But if in being neutral, you

are just hiding your choice because it seems possible to

be neutral in the relationship between the oppressors

Ideas

and the oppressed, it's absolutely impossible . It's the

neutrality vis-a.-vis this kind of relationship that works

in favor of the dominant.

M Y LE S : Always .

PAU LO : Then instead of saying I am with the dominant, I

say that I 'm neutral.

Myles, I would like to put this on the table : Precisely

because it is impossible for education to be neutral ,

educators have to confront some practical problems. A

biology teacher must know biology, but is it possible

just to teach biology? What I want to know is whether

it's possible to teach biology without discussing social

conditions, you see. Is it possible to discuss, to study

the phenomenon of life without discussing exploitation,

domination, freedom, democracy, and so on. I think

that i t's impossible, but I am also sure that if I am a

teacher of biology, I must teach biology.

Then my question is to clarify the role of the teacher.

I said biology, I could say history of education. I could

say philosophy, theology, and mathematics, and so on.

This role is a problem for the teachers. I t has to do

with their competency, with their political clarity, with

their consistency and their understanding of the very

process. It's not a question for the biology teacher to

impose on the students his or her political ideas. Do you

see? But it is a question for the teacher to discuss the

issue in a broader way and even to express his or her

choice. Do you see, then? It is a problem of not being

neutral, but of how to be different.

M Y L E S : And not impose your ideas on people . I agree fully

that you have the responsibility to put whatever you're

Ideas

teaching in a social context , relating it to society not

just acting as if it had nothing to do with people, with

humanity, because it does. There's no science that can't

be used for good or for evil . Science could be used by

whoever has the power to use it and desire to use it . I f

you make people knowledgeable about these sciences

and don't point out this fact, then you're saying, I with

draw from the battle, from the discussion of the ethics

involved. I just stick to the facts. And that of course

means that you've surrendered to the strongest forces.

You say you're neutral in what you do, you aren't that

concerned with it. If the Pentagon is using your dis

coveries , that's not your problem. It's unavoidable that

you have some responsibility, it seems to me, regardless

of what you teach or what your subject is or what your

skill is. Whatever you have to contribute has a social

dimension. And I think it's ineffective to try to impose

that on anybody. Sharing it with them is one thing, but

trying to impose it is another. You honestly say these

are my ideas and I have a right to my opinion, and if

I have a right to my opinion then you have a right to

your opinion.

You can't have an individual right. It has to be a

universal right. I have no rights that everybody else

doesn't have. There's no right I could claim that any

body else in the world can't claim, and I have to fight

for their exercising that right just like I have to fight

for my own. That doesn't mean I have to impose my

ideas on people, but it means I have a responsibility to

provide whatever l ight I can on the subject and share

my ideas with people.

Ideas

People sometimes say they 're afraid to do that for

fear they'l l impose their ideas on people. You know, I

remember that this same discussion came up back sev

eral years ago, talking to some of my friends and former

colleagues at the University of Chicago. They said I

was always advocating democracy and decision making

when I was a student, campaigning for the rights of dis

sidents to express themselves. They said , now here you

are, you're imposing your ideas on people who come to

Highlander. I said , "Do you impose your ideas?" "Oh,

no we're very careful not to impose our ideas." And I

said, "Well, you have one problem I don't have. You're

such powerful teachers that if you even breathe what

you believe, it would influence everybody. I don't have

that problem. I 've always been glad I could get some

body to pay attention to my ideas, just to share them

with them. I don't have to worry about being so over

powering that everybody will take everything I say for

granted." Well they didn't appreciate that very much,

but I did make my point.

PAU L O : Yes.

M Y LE S : I do think if I have an idea, if I believe something,

I 've got to believe it's good for everybody. It can't be just

good for me. Now if I believe that I 've got some reason

for believing it, and I've come to that belief by a lot of

processes-we've talked about some of them already

then I have a right to assume that other people, if they

were exposed to some of the things I 've been exposed

to, if they had some of the learning experiences I've

had, they might come to that same conclusion. So I'm

going to try to expose them to some ideas, some learn-

1 06

Ideas

ing that was mine, in the hopes that they will see the

light. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't think it was

very important what I believe. They 've got to come at it

from their own way. I don't see any problem with taking

a position .

Now as a matter of strategy, I very seldom tell people

what my position is on things when we're having discus

sions, because I don't think it's worth wasting the breath

until they ask a question about it. When they ask about

it, I 'm delighted to tell them. Until they pose the ques

tion that has some relevance to them, they 're not going

to pay any attention to it. I just think that's not a good

way to function educationally. I don't have any problem

about this imposing on people.

PAU L O : This is one of the theoretical questions we have when

we have a grasp on education. It is complex, you know.

For example, if we think that there is no education

without educators, that there is no education without

students, then there is no educational situation without

certain objects to be known, to be taught , to be learned.

I prefer to say to be known and reknown. There is no

education without objectives that go beyond this situa

tion today. We have methods to approach the content,

methods to make us get closer to the learners . Some

methods of approaching students can in fact push us

very far from the student. The educational situation de

mands methods, techniques, and all this together con

stitutes a process , or implies a process. The teacher

must command the contents of the program. The ques

tion is to know how to build the program, how to choose

the contents, who has the power to choose the program.

1 07

Ideas

What is the way to organize the contents. Who says that

A, B, and C must be known? Who declares that the stu

dents know nothing? Who says that the teachers do not

have the duty to know what the students already know

when they come to the classroom? All these things in my

point of view must be answered. I am sure that there

is no possibility for the existence of a teacher who does

not teach. That is, the teacher of something has to teach

something. The teacher does not need just to know the

contents but also to know how to teach the contents . To

know the history of the content and not exclusively the

content.

Now I come back again to the question. First of all,

I don't separate the content as a scientific object from

its historical and social context-as you said before, the

social conditions in which I am teaching the content to

the students. On the one hand, I know that I cannot

leave the content in a parenthesis and just speak with

the students about the political situation of the country,

because the students come to me to learn biology, for

example. I f I put biology in a parenthesis to say Brazil

ian politics are terrible now, the students have the right

to say, but look Paulo, we came here to study biology.

I can't do that . But on the other hand, I cannot put

history and social conditions in parenthesis and then

teach biology exclusively. My question is how to make

clear to the students that there is no such a thing named

biology in itself. If the teacher of biology does that and

the teacher of physics does that and so on , then the stu

dents end up by gaining the critical understanding that

biology and all the disciplines are not isolated from the

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Ideas

social life . This is my demand. These two risks exist : the

risk of putting in parenthesis the content and to em

phasize exclusively the political problem and the risk

of putting in parenthesis the political dimension of the

content and to teach just the content. For me both atti

tudes are wrong. And it is a question that comes up

because of the nature of the process of education or the

process of politics.

"I've always been ambivalent about charismatic leaders"

M Y L E S : Now charismatic leaders operate not on a small

group basis like I do or like a teacher does. They oper

ate in terms of huge chunks of society where there's no

way to get a feedback, no way to get interaction with the

people. You can intuit it or you can feel it; there's ways

to get the feedback, but it's indirect. There's where I

think there is danger of imposing on people, because

their emotions are involved. In education, emotions are

involved but they 're a part of a whole package including

intellect. In charismatic leadership, sometimes only the

emotions are involved, and I think there is a danger of

people, either good or bad people, getting converts on

the basis of not really understanding what it is they're

going into. I've always been ambivalent about charis

matic leaders . The charismatic leaders that I differ with

I have no problem with. The charismatic leaders that

I agree with , l ike Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, I

have to take a different attitude toward . It's a l ittle dif

ferent when they 're my kind.

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Ideas

One time I took a leave of absence from Highlander

to organize textile workers, in the beginning of the

industrial union movement in 1937 . I was a successful

organizer. I had two thousand people and their fami

lies that were mobilized. To keep them occupied and to

keep solidarity, we had big mass meetings every night.

The average attendance was two thousand. We were

covered by the highway patrol , police, radio, and every

newspaper; it was a big show. In an effort to really

hold the thing together-to mobilize, that's the word

I used to make speeches and put on a program. We'd

have music and singing, and I'd talk. I went through the

repertoire! I talked about all the labor histmy I knew

and all the world history I knew.

In the process of mobilizing a crowd, I kind of got

a sense of power, because the people were with me and

the enemy was against me. You get those two things

going and you're sure you're on the right track. I was

enjoying it, and suddenly I realized : "What the hell am

I doing? What is this?" I never will forget it. I was alone

in my hotel room, and I was thinking about this feeling

of power. I was a little scared of it, and yet I was fasci

nated by it , because it was an experience I 'd never had

before. I remembered that when I was a kid, before

we went to bed, we had to kneel down beside the bed

and say our prayers . The prayer was "lead me not into

temptation"-not "deliver me from sin ." I thought, "If

you yield to temptation, that's too late . You're already

hooked, so your prayer ought to be to keep out of temp

tation." This temptation was scary, so I backed off. I

decided I wasn't going to stay the whole year as an orga-

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Ideas

nizer. I decided to get back to education, because I was

afraid of power of this kind. Not that I was good at it ,

but I was good enough at it that it scared me. I decided I

wanted to be an educator not an organizer or speaker.

On the other hand, I worked pretty closely with

Martin Luther King. I had great respect for his charis

matic leadership. I know there's a real role for this type

of leadership, but I have a problem with it. Much of the

problem you raise about educators is multiplied many

times with charismatic leaders. But I don't know how to

analyze that. I 've never really come to grips with that .

How do you feel about this charismatic leadership?

PAU L O : I agree with your analysis. But I have the impression

also that no one is charismatic. Someone becomes char

ismatic in history, socially. The question for me is once

again the problem of humility. If the leader discovers

that he is becoming charismatic not because of his or

her qualities but because mainly he or she is being able

to express the expectations of a great mass of people,

then he or she is much more of a translator of the aspi

rations and dreams of the people, instead of being the

creator of the dreams. In expressing the dreams, he or

she is recreating these dreams. If he or she is humble,

I think that the danger of power would diminish.

The charismatic leader needs to know that finally he

was not created by God and afterward sent as a package

to save the people. He discovers that in order to save

the people, it is necessary that he also saves himself.

In your words, he or she has to discover that salvation

demands first liberation. Liberation and salvation are

social events and not individual ones. The leader has to

I I I

Ideas

understand that he's been shaped by the mass of the

people also and is not only shaping the people. For ex

ample, I think that Martin Luther King was like this.

Malcolm X also. They were not, as far as I understood

them, far from [the will of] the country. They had dif

ferent ways to be strong because they had to be strong.

In spite of that, they did not appear as the exclusive

owners of the truth . They had something to strongly

denounce and to announce. If the charismatic leader is

not able to criticize but at the same time to announce

what should be, he loses the prophetical dimension that

is necessary. The question is not just to make the criti

cism but to interpret the dreams of the people who are

making the leader become charismatic .

M Y LE S : And if they don't realize that the people are making

them, and think they're making the people . . .

PAU L O : Yes, this is the danger.

M Y L E S : That's the danger. Neither King or Malcolm X

thought they were making the people. They knew that

they were trying to give voice to the people making

them. They had that saving grace .

T H I R D P A RT Y : I want to base this on practice again . Dur

ing the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King was

one of many charismatic leaders that Highlander dealt

with . How difficult was this really to put into practice

on a day-to-day basis at Highlander? What were the

problems with always reminding yourself of this way of

practicing, especially during a time like that when on

the one hand you had many charismatic people, and on

the other, another way of exposing people to ways of

learning?

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Ideas

MY L E S : That question is faiTly easy to answeT. HighlandeT

wasn't just the Tecipient of the speeches of the chaTis

matic leadeTs . HighlandeT was involved in the Citizen

ship School pTogTam, which was an integTal paTt of the

civil Tights movement. What we had done befoTe was

being used as one of the many bases of the civil rights

movement. SO OUT TOle was an accepted, functioning

Tole within the civil Tights movement. We had OUT own

sense of values, sense of impoTtance. Andy Young has

chaTacteTized the Citizenship School as the basis of the

civil rights movement, and otheT people have said it

played a majoT TOle in the civil Tights movement. I think

it played only one of the TOles in the civil rights move

ment . We had enough of a Tole that we could be satisfied

with OUT own Tole . FOT example, we weTe asked to set

up an educational pTOgTam fOT the Southern ChTistian

LeadeTship ConfeTence. We weTe asked to set up an

educational pTogTam fOT the Student Non-Violent Co

oTdinating Committee . I had no desiTe to play any otheT

kind of Tole , except a backgTOund educational Tole. It

was veTY fulfill ing and veTY satisfactoTY. We knew we

weTe involved in OUT own way and that OUT Tole was

valued by the chaTismatic leadeTs. I think theTe is a full

Tecognizable Tole wheTe you don't have to feel inferioT

in any way to the chaTismatic Tole. We weTe dealing with

the Tadicals, but we weTe dealing also with the people

that they couldn't Teach. They had to Teach the people

thTough us quite often. TheiT speeches didn't get to

them. And when they did, the people didn't know what

to do with the speeches. The chaTismatic leadeTs Te

spected us because we could implement theiT speeches.

Ideas

In the labor movement, for example, the interna

tional presidents of the unions wanted to come to High

lander and make speeches, because it gave them a cer

tain appearance of being educators . But we didn't have

time for those speeches. We wanted them to send the

students to Highlander and pay the bill, but we didn't

want them to come to speak, but they insisted. One time

I remember we decided we had to give in to this, but

we didn't want it to take too much time, so we decided

to invite five officials at a time, for one day of a work

shop that lasted two weeks. They could say they'd been

to Highlander, and we didn't have to put up with their

speeches so much. I never will forget . One of the old

timers said, "In the time that has been allotted me, I can

do no more than to give my name and part of my ad

dress." And he meant mailing address not speech ! We

recognized that we had to have union officials' support

as part of our process, but we didn't expect to educate

them. They didn't come to be educated. They came

to be there, be present. So we gave them a chance to

say they 'd been at Highlander and write it up in their

newspapers . When we had Martin Luther King here,

we had him to speak. We had him at our twenty-fifth

anniversary to make a speech. We didn't try to make

those speeches into discussions.

The staff understood that . We all worked those

things out together, but we did have problems among

ourselves. I remember one time I was holding forth in

one of the workers' sessions. A student sent a note up to

me saying, "When you're talking, you aren't learning."

Ideas

They sent the note to me! I was talking, you know. So

we had to deal with those problems.

"The difference between education and organizing"

M Y L E S : One of the unsolved problems, even I think here at

Highlander, is the difference between education and

organizing, and that's an old question, it goes way back .

Saul Alinsky and I went on a circuit. We had the "AI in

sky/Horton show" that went out on the circuit debating

and discussing the difference between organizing and

education. At that time Saul was a staunch supporter of

Highlander, and I was a staunch supporter of him, but

we differed and we recognized the difference. We had

no problem about it , and we tried to explain to people

that there was a difference. Saul says that organizing

educates. I said that education makes possible organiza

tion, but there's a different interest, different emphasis.

That's still unclarified. In my mind I kept them separate

because I could function much better having a clear cut

idea about what I consider the difference in operating

on that basis.

The reason it was such a debatable subject is because

the overwhelming majority of the people who were

organizing and who were officials of unions in the South

had been at Highlander. So the public who only saw that

didn't know what went on at Highlander, and they as

sumed that we were an organizer's training school. But

I kept saying no, no. We do education and they become

organized. They become officials. They become what-

Ideas

ever they are, educational directors. Basically it's not

technical training. We're not in the technical business.

We emphasize ways you analyze and perform and relate

to people, but that's what I call education, not organiz

ing. When I wanted to organize-which I did at one

period, something I 'll go into later on-I resigned from

the Highlander staff. 1 took a leave of absence from the

Highlander staff because I didn't want organizing and

education confused in the minds of the people. It was

confusing enough as it was.

So Highlander's been in the situation where we were

looked at from all kinds of different angles. We always

had to watch not to accept the appraisal of other people,

and try to make our own criticism relating to these crit

ics. We just had to constantly keep clear about what we

meant by education. One of the examples I used to use

got me in trouble and still gets me in trouble when I

use it. I'd say if you were working with an organization

and there's a choice between the goal of that organi

zation, or the particular program they're working on,

and educating people, developing people, helping them

grow, helping them become able to analyze-if there's

a choice, we'd sacrifice the goal of the organization for

helping the people grow, because we think in the long

run it's a bigger contribution . That's still a hot issue. I

used that illustration in a participatory research meet

ing when I was pushed on the difference. One woman

there was organizing a hospital . She was just furious,

because she thought it was inhumane to take that posi

tion , that my purpose was to develop people instead of

particular issues. I would usually find there wouldn't

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Ideas

be that contradiction, you see, but if it came down to

it , then you have to make that distinction . That's how

strongly I felt about separating the two ideas.

PAULO : Could I make a comment just about that . I think

that mobil ization of masses of people has or had, in

side of itself, organization. That is, it's impossible to

start mobilizing without organizing. The very process

of mobilizing demands organization of those who are

beginning to be mobil ized. Secondly, I think that both

mobilizing and organizing have in their nature educa

tion as something indispensable-that is, education as

development of sensibility, of the notion of risk, of con

fronting some tensions that you have to have in the

process of mobilizing or organizing. Knowing, for ex

ample, the dialectical relationship between tactics and

strategy. You have to have some tactics that have to do

with the strategy you have. You understand the strategy

as the objective, as the goal , as the dream you have, and

as the tactics you raise as you try to put into practice, to

materialize the objective, the dream. In the process of

mobilizing, of organizing, you need from time to time to

stop a little bit with the leaders in the groups in order to

think about the space you already walked. In reflecting

on the action of mobilizing and organizing, you begin

to teach something. You have to teach something. It's

impossible for me not to learn. A good process of mobi

lizing and organizing results in learning from the very

process and goes beyond.

Until some years ago, among the left groups and

left parties, we had strong examples of how education

was not taken seriously during the process of mobiliza-

Ideas

tion and organization, which were seen just as political

process. In fact they are educational processes at the

same time. Why this attitude? I think that the answer

should be found in the analysis of or the understanding

of education as something that really is superstructure

and a productive reproducer of the dominant ideology.

I t's very clear, for example, in the seventies, the writ

ings about education's power to reproduce the domi

nant ideology. It was, I think, because of this that the

left parties and the groups always thought, in Latin

America, for example, that education is something that

comes after, after we get power. When we get power

through the revolution, then we can begin to treat edu

cation. I n this line of thought, this vision was not able

even to make a distinction between the schooling sys

tem as Myles has underlined and the activities out of

the subsystem. In fact , nevertheless, even education in

side of the subsystem of education is not exclusively the

reproducer of the dominant ideology. This is the task

that the ruling class expects the teachers to accomplish.

But it's possible also to have another task as an edu

cator. Instead of reproducing the dominant ideology,

an educator can denounce it, taking a risk of course .

I t's not easy to be done, but education cannot be ex

hausted exclusively as the reproducer of the subsystem

of the dominant ideology. Theoretically it is not exclu

sively this .

Today I think that the tension is expressed in a dif

ferent way. I know many people in the left parties in

Latin America who discovered through practice what

political education is. I think that the tension is being

l I S

Ideas

treated in a different way today. When we're in the pro

cess of mobil izing or organizing, it begins to be seen also

as an educational problem of process and product , be

cause undoubtedly there is a different kind of education

in mobilization before getting power, and there is also

the continuity of that . That's a mistake committed be

fore, that education should come just exclusively after

organizing. Education is before, is during, and is after. It's

a process, a permanent process . It has to do with the

human existence and curiosity.

M Y LE S : If you're into having a successful organizing cam

paign and dealing with a specific project, and that's the

goal, then whether you do it yourself or an expert does

it or some bountiful person in the community does it,

or the government does it without your involvement be

cause that solves the problem-then you don't take the

time to let people develop their own solutions . If the

purpose is to solve the problem, there are a lot of ways to

solve the problem that are so much simpler than going

through all this educational process. Solving the prob

lem can't be the goal of education . It can be the goal of

organizations. That's why I don't think organizing and

education are the same thing. Organizing implies that

there's a specific, limited goal that needs to be achieved,

and the purpose is to achieve that goal. Now if that's it,

then the easiest way to get that done solves the problem.

But i f education i s to be part of the process, then you

may not actually get that problem solved, but you've

educated a lot of people . You have to make that choice.

That's why I say there's a difference. So when I went to

organize for a union, I got a leave of absence from the

1 1 9

Ideas

Highlander staff. I wouldn't do that as a member of the

Highlander staff because I don't think organizing and

education are the same thing. I do think participatory

research and education are the same thing, but I don't

think organizing and education are the same. I think

the goal is different.

Now a lot of people use organizing to educate

people. That's what I was trying to do when I was orga

nizing textile unions, but when it comes down to it , I

wasn't free to make a decision not to get a contract, to

sacrifice the contract and the organization for educa

tion, because I was hired to organize the union. Orga

nizers are committed to achieving a limited, specific

goal whether or not it leads to structural change, or

reinforces the system, or plays in the hands of capital

ists. The problem is confused because a lot of people

use organizing to do some education and they think it's

empowerment because that's what they 're supposed to

be doing. But quite often they disempower people in the

process by using experts to tell them what to do while

having the semblance of empowering people. That con

fuses the issue considerably.

T H I RD P A R T Y : Your description of organizing is a descrip

tion of what most of education is. Most of education is

specifying a specific objective and reaching that objec

tive irregardless of how the process works .

M Y LE S : That's right. Schooling.

T H I RD PA RT Y : SO most schooling is in fact analogous to what

you call organizing?

PAU LO : But, inside of the process of organizing, as Myles

said, first we have education taking part of the nature

1 20

Ideas

of organizing. What I want to say is that it's impossible

to organize without educating and being educated by

the very process of organizing. Secondly, we can take

advantage of the process of organizing in order to de

velop a very special process of education . Maybe I will

try to be more clear. For example, when we are trying to

organize, of course we have to try to mobilize , because

mobil ization and organization are together. But in the

process of mobilizing and automatically organizing we

discover as well , as in any kind of action or practice,

that we must become more and more efficient. If you

are not trying to be efficient in organizing workshops,

the people will not answer you next year when you call.

That is, efficiency, without being an instrument of en

slaving you, is something that is absolutely necessary.

Inefficiency has to do with the distance between what

you do and what you would like to get . Do you see

that we manage with efficiency in this place? I have my

dream. Then what did I do in order to materialize my

dream? Then my evaluation has to do with this.

Those who are engaged in mobilizing and organiz

ing have to evaluate this process. In the process of

evaluation, undoubtedly, there is an interpretive and

necessary moment in which the leaders who are trying

to mobilize and organize have to know better what they

are doing. The organizers engage in critical reflection

on what they did. In doing that the leaders start par

ticipating in a process in the next stage of mobilization

and organization, because they change. They tend to

change in their language. Do you see? If they don't do

that they are not capable. They will change their lan-

1 2 1

Ideas

guage, their speech, the contents of their speech to the

extent that in mobilizing the people they are learning from the people. And then the more they learn from

the people the more they can mobilize. It's expected.

They can mobil ize the people. Then because of that I

always see that it's absolutely necessary for mobilizers

and organizers to be quite sure about the educational

nature of this practice.

In a second aspect we can show, in an analysis of the

process we call mobilizing and organizing-which im

plies organizers getting more and closer contacts with

groups of people-that the organizers are engaged, if

they are good, in a kind of participatory research.

T H I RD PART Y : If they 're good.

PAU L O : If they are good. It's necessary to say, if they are

good. And if they are good in being involved in par

ticipatory research, they necessarily are grasping some

issues that have to do with the expectations and frus

trations of the people, some issues that have to do with

people's lack of knowledge. Then it should be possible,

starting from the process of mobilizing, to begin to cre

ate workshops, for example, for the people in which

educators could illuminate the issues coming from the

people. I see too that through educational moments in

a mobilizing process , one takes part in the very process

of mobilizing. The other one is something that comes

up from, and because of, the mobilization process.

M Y L E S : Yes. I think certainly you can learn from mobil iz

ing, but you can learn to manipulate the people or

you can learn to educate the people. There's two kinds

of learning that come out of the same experience. In

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Ideas

both the civil rights movement and the labor move

ment , there's no other identifiable source that produced

as many organizers as Highlander did. There were so

many organizing in the labor movement who came from

Highlander that people called it an organizer's school .

There weren't many organizers in the South. We were

starting without much experience, so we had to de

velop a lot of organizers . I always said that Highlander

was not a school for organizers . It was a school to help

people learn to analyze and give people values, and they

became the, organizers . The reason so many of High

lander's people were successful organizers was because

of that. Not that we trained them in techniques of mobi

lizing and organizing, because we didn't do that. The

same training that people got to be an organizer, they

got to be an official of the unions, they got to be a com

mittee member, they got to be a shop steward . I t was

all the same. It wasn't technical . We didn't tell people

how to do things. But they became successful organiz

ers, and people who wanted to be organizers knew they

came from Highlander, so they 'd come to Highlander

so they could be organizers. We taught them our own

way, and the reason we did that was because we wanted

them to be educators as well as organizers. Instead of

just mobilizers we wanted them to educate the people .

They were the people who insisted on having the edu

cational program in their unions. When they'd organize

the union , they 'd immediately set up the educational

program because they understood that was part of a

union, whereas some of the people would operate from

the top. They didn't want an educational program be-

1 2 3

Ideas

cause they wanted to control it from the top. Now that

was a different kind of organization. When I say the

difference between education and organizing, I don't

mean to say you can't have educating and organizing

because that's what we try to do. An organizing experi

ence can be educational . It can be. But it has to be

done with the purpose of having democratic decision

making, having people participate in the action and

not having just one authoritative leader. Otherwise it

won't work.

I 'm not critical of organizations . In fact Highlander

is based on organizations . In the old days, for example,

we wouldn't take anybody at Highlander who wasn't a

product of an organization , who wasn't involved in an

organization , who didn't come from an organization. So

to separate Highlander's thinking from organizations

i s a mistake, because we think organizations have to be

the first step toward a social movement. What you do in

that organization is different if you just think of orga

nizing or if you just think of the way Highlander works.

It's a l ittle confusing, but in practice it seemed to work

out pretty well .

PAU L O : Organizers who hope to educate must increase their

historical and cultural sensitivity. An educator or mobi

lizer without that vigil should change professions . Sec

ondly, without the sensitivity of intuition , it's impossible

to become an educator, but it is also impossible to be

come an educator by stopping at the level of sensitivity.

I must be intuitive , but I cannot stop with intuition. I

have to take the object of my intuition as an object of

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Ideas

my knowing and grasp it theoretically and not because

it just exists , you see.

Myles, I remember that some time ago you talked

to me about a difficult situation you had in the thirties

with a worker-leader who wanted you to say what they

should do. Do you remember?

M Y L E S : We had been successful at Highlander earl ier in

organizing a county in which we lived, organizing the

unions, and organizing the county politically. We took

over the county politically by using education, so I knew

how to do that. I knew how education could be used as

a means of building organizations, union and political

organizations , but I didn't know what you could do in

a short period of an organizing campaign, which has

for its purpose getting a union organized and getting a

contract. That's the purpose in setting up a union .

Within that framework I was interested in going as

far as I could in helping people develop the capacity

to make decisions and to take responsibility, which is

what I think is the role of an educator. One of the

things I was doing was working through committees to

get the committee members to take the responsibilities

and learn how to do things . We had a relief committee

that needed a little help at first in how you handle re

lief problems and funds that come in. I finally got this

committee and the others to the place where I didn't

even need to know what was going on, and I felt that

was kind of a measure of success . If they didn't come

to me to ask me or to tell me, then I thought they 're

doing pretty well . But the strike committee was one of

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Ideas

the toughest; they had to think through the strategy of a

strike. We had the local police force, the county sheriff,

the state militia against us. So it was a tough job. They

were trying to break the strike. The highway patrol had

begun to usher scabs through the picket lines and they

were beginning to really break into OUT solidarity. The

strikers said : "We've got to try something new. We've

got to do something." One guy said , "Why don't we just

dynamite the damn mill?" "Then we won't have a job,"

they said, "that won't work." We were having a little

meeting up in my motel room. There were very few

places we could meet where we wouldn't be l istened to.

The room was probably bugged, and the telephone was.

They kept throwing out ideas, and I 'd raise questions

to get them to think a little more about it. Finally they

said they couldn't come up with anything, any strategy,

or anything to do. They were getting desperate . They

said : "Well , now you've had more experience than we

have. You've got to tell us what to do. You're the ex

pert." I said : "No, let's talk about it a little bit more. I n

the first place I don't know what to do, and i f I did know

what to do I wouldn't tell you , because if I had to tell

you today then I 'd have to tell you tomorrow, and when

I'm gone you'd have to get somebody else to tell you."

One guy reached in his pocket and pulled out a pistol

and says, "Goddamn you, if you don't tell us I'm going

to kill you." I was tempted then to become an instant

expert, right on the spot! But I knew that if I did that,

all would be lost and then all the rest of them would

start asking me what to do. So I said : "No. Go ahead

Ideas

and shoot if you want to, but I 'm not going to tell you."

And the others calmed him down.

PAU L O : This is a very beautiful story, if you consider that the

educator has to educate and then because of that, the

educator has to intervene . When I speak about inter

vening, some people symbolize this as if I , the educator,

should come with some instruments to cut trees, and so

on. For me it's a fantastic example of how the educator

radically educates.

M Y L E S : Sounds a little radical all right.

PAU L O : The best way you had to intervene was to reject

giving the solution and secondly to be honest. Say first,

I don't know; and secondly, if I did know I would not

tell you because doing it the first time means I would

have to do it the second, third , the fourth. You see, it

is the intervention of the educator. That is, you did not

reject being the educator. It is beautiful.

M Y L E S : That's why I make the distinction between organiz

ing and educating. Now an organizer'S job, one who

wasn't an educator, would be to get that contract the

best way he could. That wouldn't have been a problem

for him-to tell them what he thought was the best way

to deal with that situation. His purpose was to get the

organization's goal achieved, you see . And that's what

an organizer'S job is. An organizer'S job is not to educate

people as a prime consideration . His job is to accom

plish a l imited, specific goal . I'm not saying it isn't a

wonderful goal for the people. I 'm not saying it isn't

valuable . I'm just saying there's a difference between

organizing and educating, and I think there's a very

1 2 7

Ideas

important distinction . And an educator should never

become an expert, and an organizer quite often finds

that that's his main strength , being the expert .

"My expertise is in knowing not to be an expert"

T H I R D PA R T Y : Myles, is that sort of the same philosophy that

you and Highlander used to exclude people from work

shops who the people perceive as experts? I know we've

had very similar discussions around other ways that

people perceive authority. For instance, in the occu

pational health movement , when coal miners came to

Highlander to learn about and talk about occupational

disease, we didn't want doctors in the room. Is there

something similar at work here between experts and

charismatic leaders doing the same thing in a workshop

process?

M Y L E S : I think we've had a lot of experience with that . Often

when I say you start with people's experience , people

get the point that you start and stop with that experi

ence, but of course all of you know better. There's a time

when people's experience runs out. I 'll give you an ex

ample. We were working with a group of black parents

here in a Tennessee town where only about 5 percent of

the population is black. The schools had merged. They

weren't integrated ; they just absorbed the blacks and

made whites out of them without schools changing any

of their all-white, racist ways of doing. So the black kids

were miserable. The parents at first insisted on them

fitting in, and then they finally realized what they were

doing, really brutalizing the kids by setting up situa-

1 28

Ideas

tions in which they were discriminated against . So they

came down to Highlander for a couple of workshops

about this situation . They decided that they were going

to have a lawsuit, go into court . Well , pretty soon they

exhausted what they knew. At that point, I said , "Would

it be helpful if we got a lawyer, a friendly lawyer, to

tell you the processes you'll have to go through?" They

said , "We'll welcome that." Now that's what I call an

extension of their knowledge, their experiences, which

stays well within the framework of where they are in

their thinking. It's their idea. So at that point you can

feed in a lot of information that they don't have.

I asked a friend if he could come out-as a teacher,

not as a lawyer-to teach them about what having a

lawsuit meant in terms of time, cost , likely results and

so on. When he got through, they realized that the

solution could be ten years off, because there could be

appeals, and their kids would be out of school by the

time that was over. It would cost a lot of money and, in

the meantime, they would more or less just sit on their

hands and do nothing. So it would in fact kill their orga

nization. Now he was very sympathetic . He was very

pro-integration and he was anxious to be helpful and

what he did was extremely helpful. But he wanted to

go ahead, go on and advise them about what to do. I

stopped him at that point because I didn't want the ex

pert to tell them what to do. I wanted the expert to tell

them the facts and let them decide what to do. Now

there's a big difference in giving information and tell

ing people how to use it. I had to really just get a hold

of him by the arm and lead him out of the room. He

1 2 9

Ideas

was still talking over his shoulder when I was taking

him out. He still wanted to help these people out.

Now that use of expert knowledge is different from

having the expert telling people what to do, and I think

that's where I draw the line. I have no problem with

using information that experts have, as long as they

don't say this is what you should do. I 've never yet found

any experts that know where the l ine is. If people who

want to be experts want to tell people what to do be

cause they think it's their duty to tell them what to do,

to me that takes away the power of people to make

decisions. I t means that they 're going to call another

expert when they need help. They learn by doing what

you're supposed to do, and there's no empowerment

that comes as a result of that . There is an organizational

success , maybe, as a result of that , but there's no em

powerrrumt of people, no learning. So that's my feeling

about how you use and how you don't use experts .

T H I R D PA RT Y : You could probably predict that this would

come up. Why did you wait to bring the lawyer into the

circle? Why wasn't he there from the beginning?

M Y L E S : Sure I knew it would come up. It had to come up,

because I know the pattern in this region is you go into

court and you lull people. But suppose I had said the

first day that these people came to Highlander: "Now I

know you're going to end up tomorrow talking about a

lawsuit. We're going to get a lawyer out here and get this

settled at once and let him tell you what to do." Then

there'd be no learning taking place. There'd be some in

formation shared, but no learning-no learning about

how to deal with problems, no sense of responsibility.

Ideas

They would learn that way to turn their problems over

to an expert. People already do that all the time ; they

don't need to come to Highlander to turn things over to

the expert . They 've got to think through the informa

tion themselves or they can't use it when they get back.

It can't be part of their experience , their experience of

learning, and therefore be theirs, if you deny them the

right of making it theirs. If I 'm the expert, my exper

tise is in knowing not to be an expert or in knowing how

I feel experts should be used.

"My respect for the soul of the culture • . . "

PAU LO : How is it possible for us to work in a community

without feeling the spirit of the culture that has been

there for many years, without trying to understand the

soul of the culture? We cannot interfere in this culture.

Without understanding the soul of the culture we just

invade the culture.

I think that it's necessary to clarify a point. I come

back again to a question you [third party) asked us, in

which you said you and Myles are demanding concern

ing vision and values. I come back again with a very

good example now. My respect for the soul of the cul

ture does not prevent me from trying, with the people,

to change some conditions that appear to me as obvi

ously against the beauty of being human. Let me give a

concrete example. Let us take a main cultural tradition

in Latin America that prevents men from cooking. It

is very interesting to analyze that . In the last analysis,

men created the tradition and the assumption in the

Ideas

heads of the women that if men cook, they give the im

pression that they are no longer male. With that, men

get advantages. Okay, this is the tradition . Let us take

the second community in which men do nothing con

cerning the home work. Women have to do everything

at home and also in the field , and men come back from

the field just to eat, but the women also have been there

working.

Now I am an educator, and I am discussing in work

shops with this community. My question is this : is it

possible for me, concerning my vision of the world

because I respect the cultural tradition of this commu

nity-is it possible for me to spend my life without ever

touching this point? Without ever criticizing them just

because I respect their traditional culture? No, I don't

do that. But I am not invading in not doing that-in

doing the opposite , that is, in criticizing, in challeng

ing men and women in this culture to understand how

wrong it is from the human point of view. One man

told me that it is determined historically that all men

have the right to eat what women cook. It's not like this

because it is a kind of distinct destiny. It is cultural and

historical , and if it is cultural and historical, it can be

changed . And if it can be changed , it's not unethical to

put the possibility of change on the table.

It's just one example, and there are lots of other

examples concerning respect. I insist it is one thing to

respect; the other thing is to keep and to increase some

thing that has nothing to do with the vision of the edu

cator. I prefer to be very clear and to assume my duty of

challenging, but of course I know that I have the duty

Ideas

to challenge that culture and those people. I also know

that there is a time to start doing that . I cannot start

on the same day I arrive. I cannot do that . Then the

question now is not strategical, it's tactical. Strategically

I am against it. I am in favor of the struggle of women.

Tactically I can be silent six months about this, but the

first occasion I have, I bring the issue on the table, even

though it makes us uncomfortable.

M Y L E S : Paulo I 'd l ike to get back to where we started on this .

Now I 'm all for those of us who are honest about our

positions, who say we're against the system. We want

to change the system. I'm all for us being extremely

critical with each other about this problem. I have no

respect for people who claim to be neutral or for institu

tions that claim to be neutral making criticisms of us

none. They have the power base to magnify all of their

positions, and then they label it neutral .

PAU L O : I remember how Amilcar Cabral , the great African

leader, dealt with this. In The Letters to Guinea Bissau,* I

discussed a little bit how Amilcar dealt with this. During

the war in the bush, he always led seminars . He brought

some people from the front with him to the bush . In

the shadows of the trees, he used to discuss, to evalu

ate the war, but he always brought some issues about

science, culture, teaching to discuss with the people. In

one of the seminars , one of the issues he touched was

the power of the amulet. He said : "One of you told me

that you were saved because of your amulet. I would

* Paulo Freire, Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea Bissau, trans.

Carmen St. John Hunter (New York: Seabury Press. 1 978).

1 33

Ideas

like to tell you that we save ourselves from the bullets

of the Portuguese, if we learn how to save ourselves. I

am sure that the sons of your sons will say sometime

our fathers and our parents fought beautifully, but they

used to have some strange ideas." He respected his cul

ture but he was fighting against what he used to call the

weakness of culture . He said , in his reflections about

culture, that every culture has negativeness and posi

tiveness, and what we have to do is to improve the posi

tiveness and to overcome the negativeness . The belief

in the power of the amulet was one of the weaknesses

of the culture. It would be absolutely wrong if he said

those who believe in the amulet will be in jail for two

days. It would be an absurdity, but for me it should be

also an absurdity not to have said what he said.

M Y LE S : He had to find a way to do it.

PAU LO : Yes.

M Y L E S : We had to find ways to handle our own "weakness

of culture." One of the real problems in the South in

the early days of Highlander was segregation, discrimi

nation against people of color, legally and traditionally.

One of our principles is that we believe in social equality

for all people and no discrimination for any reason

religious , race, sex, or anything else. The social cus

toms were to have segregation. Now how did we deal

with that social custom? The way that was used by

most people working in what then was called race rela

tions was to talk about it and pray over it and wait for

magic changes, I suppose . Some dealt with segregation

by having segregated programs, and educating Blacks

here and whites there, l ike it was traditional to do. We

1 34

Ideas

chose to deal with it directly, knowing that a discussion

and analysis wouldn't change their minds.

We decided to hold integrated workshops and say

nothing about it. We found that if you didn't talk about

it, if you didn't force people to admit that they were

wrong-that's what you do when you debate and argue

with people-you can do it. People didn't quite under

stand how it was happening. They just suddenly real

ized they were eating together and sleeping in the same

rooms, and since they were used to doing what they

were supposed to do in society, the status quo, they didn't

know how to react negatively to our status quo. We had

another status quo at Highlander, so as long as we didn't

talk about it, it was very very little problem. Then later

on, participants started talking about it from another

point of view, a point of view of experience . They had

experienced something new, so they had something posi

tive to build on . When we started talking about it, it

wasn't to say : "Now, look you've changed. We were right

and you were wrong." We said : "Now you've had an

experience here. When you get back you'll be dealing

with people in your unions who haven't had this ex

perience, and they're going to know you've been to an

integrated school . How are you going to explain it to

them?" So they started, not ever talking about how they

had changed or how they had faced this problem, but

with how they could explain to other people . We just

skipped the stage of discussion. Of course, it was going

on inside all the time, but we didn't want to put it in

terms of an argument. or a debate.

Now we were violating the mores. We were doing

1 35

Ideas

something; we weren't taking our time. We just did it,

head on, from the very beginning. Sometimes you have

to deal with those problems and sometimes you don't.

Sometimes you can delay, sometimes you can't. I think

you always have to be conscious of going against the

traditions of people. You have to really think seriously

about that.

PAU LO : Absolutely. Even in order to change some traditions,

you have to start from there. I t's impossible not to.

T H I R D P A R T Y : When you talk about looking at the traditions

of a culture, you're saying part of my responsibility is

to evaluate the culture, to criticize the culture , to accept

and to understand it , but to criticize it. Then part of

my responsibility is to take anything that I feel is unjust,

unfair and try to do something about it . Isn't that fair?

PAU LO : Yes it is.

M Y LE S : When people criticize me for not having any respect

for existing structures and institutions, I protest. I say

I give institutions and structures and traditions all the

respect that I think they deserve. That's usually mighty

little , but there are things that I do respect. They have

to earn that respect. They have to earn it by serving

people. They don't earn it just by age or legality or

tradition.

We've got some good traditions in this country on

paper and in the lives of people about individual free

dom, which I value very highly. I used to say there

are only two things that people who came to High

lander had to accept as a condition of coming, and that

is no discrimination, period, and complete freedom of

Ideas

speech. Now freedom of speech in this country, if you

want to simplify it, is to me a value to be preserved and

extended and built on. It's a tradition that we've devel

oped further than most countries , and I value that. I 'd

like to see other countries have it . For another example,

in the traditions of the Native Americans, we have the

holistic concept of society being one, that the universe

is one. People and trees and rocks and history are all

merged. In Native American visions, they 're all related .

They have the vision but they know history. This holistic

concept is the oldest tradition we actually have in terms

of history. It's not widespread, but you can't say it's an

un-American tradition. I t's the most American kind of

tradition.

I 'm not saying that everything in a people's culture

is bad. I 'm just saying that you have to pick and choose

and keep the good things. Now I have very little respect

for the electoral system in the United States. I could

have respected it in the early days, when the country

was small and we had small population . The system

that we have in the United States was set up at a time

when the total population was the population of Ten

nessee. We've stretched it to try to make it work for

different kind of problems and in stretching and adapt

ing it, we've lost its meaning. We stil l have the form

but not the meaning. There's a lot of things that we

have to look at critically that might have been useful at

one time that are no longer useful. I think there's some

good in everything. There's some bad in everything.

But there's so little good in some things that you know

1 37

Ideas

for practical purposes they 're useless. They're beyond

salvation . There's so much good in some things , even

though there's bad, that we build on that.

PAU LO : I have the impression in our discussion that we have

been getting around a central point. We have said lots

of times since the beginning of our conversations, five

days ago , that the educator does not have the right to

be silent just because he or she has to respect the cul

ture. If he or she does not have the right to impose

his or her voice on the people , he does not have the

right to be silent. It has to do precisely with the duty of

intervening, which the educator has to assume without

becoming afraid. There is no reason for an educator to

be ashamed of this .

"I learned a lot from being a father"

PAU LO : I remember I learned a lot from being a father.

M Y L E S : SO did I .

PAU LO : And I learned a lot from watching how Elza was a

mother. I remember at home, Elza and I never said no

without explaining the reason why. Never. If I said no,

I would have to have some reason. Look, I don't want

to give you the impression that I am a rationalist. No,

it is not true, because I am a very strongly emotional

being, full of feelings without any fear of expressing

them. What I want to say is that behind no and yes there

is argument and disagreement, and in every kind of

argument and disagreement there are many things to

be said. I just don't say no because I love you ; I say no

because I have some reasons to say no. Why not teach

Ideas

kids to begin to look for the reasons, for the facts , for

the events, because there always are reasons. I had to

explain every time why it was not possible.

Secondly, every time it was possible for children,

without risking their lives , to learn by doing, I preferred

that they do this. And afterwards I discussed it with

them. In being a father and a mother, Elza and 1 were

always, it's very interesting, engaged in the process of

reflecting with the kids. I hope that they didn't ever get

tired of our teaching. We always were teaching them.

Because of this , 1 never said no and was silent. I remem

ber [that] one time 1 lost my patience ; 1 can't remember

where I was. 1 committed a tremendous injustice with

Christina, and she became very sad immediately. She

went to bed, and 1 followed her. 1 kissed her and 1 said :

"I came here to ask you to forgive me. 1 was wrong."

And she smiled with the lips and the eyes and she kissed

me, and she slept very well . I hope that because of that,

she did not need a psychotherapist today. Maybe I have

avoided this expense.

M Y L E S : That's wonderful, how much you can learn. 1 could

give a lot of examples, but one example of learning is

still with me, and 1 still use it. Our kids grew up in

the mountains, where people sometimes beat and whip

their kids. I t's called physical abuse, and of course we

didn't believe in physical abuse. We didn't believe in

whipping the kids and slapping them around , and we

were going to be kind to them, love them. One time

Thorsten had done something that I didn't approve of,

and I talked to him and I told him how that hurt me,

how sad I was. Thorsten started crying and he said :

1 39

ldeas

"Why are you so mean to me? Why don't you just do

like other parents do and whip me so it'd be over with.

It wouldn't be so mean, not so painful." Suddently, I

realized that he would much prefer a switching and get

it over with than for me to be sad. It hurt him more for

me to be sad than it would for me to whip him . Well , it

really upset my whole way of thinking about brutality.

I realized here I was being the brutal person trying to

keep from being brutal . It's always in the back of my

mind when I read about mountain parents switching

their kids and about how brutal they are. What they

don't say is that kid crawls up in her daddy 's lap, even

though he hasn't washed his face since he got back from

the mine. She hugs and kisses the father because she

knows there's love there. They would make the same

mistake I made, you know. It's changed the whole way

of looking at things, because brutality can be some

thing other than physical. That was a real lesson that

Thorsten taught me. A real lesson .

T H I R D P A RT Y : Did he get spankings after that?

M Y L E S : I'm serious, you do learn so much how to deal with

problems. After Zilphia had died, Thorsten and Charis

got to doing a little conniving. They came to me one

day and said : "You know, it's just wonderful to have

you for a parent, and it means so much, all the things

that you do at Highlander, things you believe in, people

discussing things and voting on things . You say you be

lieve in black and white people l iving together, so you

do what you believe in." They made me this song and

dance that we're so lucky to have a parent like you ,

and I was saying yeah, now what's coming next, what's

Ideas

coming next? They said , "We think we ought to vote

on everything we do." It was two to one, you know, and

I said , "Well, it'd be good if we could do it. What do

you have in mind?" "We've been talking about having a

vacation, and you keep saying we can't have a vacation.

We ought to vote on it." I said : "You can vote on the

vacation and you can decide to do it, and then you can

help me get the money to do it, and you can help me

arrange my schedule so I' l l have time to do it, and we'll

take a vacation . But you're going to have to share some

of the responsibilities of carrying out the decision. You

can make decisions for yourself without doing this , but

you can't make decisions for other people. You can't

make decisions about what other people have to do."

I had to deal with the problem of making decisions

for others in a very important way with the kids. How

far do you go and how do you go in terms of making

democracy work and letting people make decisions? My

children educated me in a lot of ways. Some of those

ways have carried over.

PAU LO : Yes. I think that maybe the main lesson I got in

working with my son and daughters was how impor

tant it was for their development, for us, Elza and my

self, to understand from the beginning the need for

limits. Without the l imits, it's impossible for freedom to

become freedom and also it's impossible for authority

to accomplish its duty, which is precisely to structure

limits.

But once again your question . You see how impor

tant is the problem you brought, Myles, into our dis

cussion, and I know that you brought this problem

Ideas

into the discussion because you experienced it in Latin

America, as I have. That is, we need l imits, and in ex

periencing the need for l imits, we are also experiencing

the respect for freedom and the need for exercising au

thority. You see, without the authority of the father and

of the mother, the kids cannot grow up well . This is not

a problem of four times four is sixteen in the decimal

system. I am now speaking with the certainty of experi

ence. The same thing is true ; without the limits of the

teacher, the students cannot know. That is, the teacher

has to enforce the limits . For example, how is it possible

for a teacher to teach if the students come and go from

the room any time they want on the behalf of "democ

racy." What if the teacher is not able to say on the first

day : "no, it's impossible. You come here on time and you

leave here on time as well as I do." What respect can the

students have for a teacher who never arrives on time

and who never gives class because he or she is always

trying to make a pact with the students in order not to

give them the class? A teacher who proposes surrepti

tiously to the students not to come to the next class does

not have any right to demand respect, because she or he

lost the limit for his or her authority. Freedom cannot

respect this kind of authority and it destroys the rela

tionship. You see? I think that it's very important. The

same thing is in the relationship between, for example,

power in society and ourselves.

M Y L E S : There's another side to this l imit business . The

limits quite often have the opposite effect . They inhibit

growth and development . If you use that idea of limits, you've got to also think of how people accept limits that

Ideas

don't even exist-like in the university. Teachers there

don't dare question the capitalist system. They don't

dare raise questions about the administration. They

think that if they did that they 'd lose their jobs . For

most of them, that isn't true at all. Most of them could

get by, could do much more than they realize they can

do. Their l imits are not as tight, not as close to them as

they think. So I 'm always suggesting to people that they

test out how far they can push those limits and do it in

a quiet sort of a way, kind of a pilot project to see how far

they can go. I think most people will find out they can

go much further in an institution that is big and bureau

cratic and depends primarily on reports and grades.

Administrators don't look into the classroom so long as

things seem to fit. So I think there's a lot more leeway in

every field. At Highlander, sometimes we're a little too

cautious and we don't push the boundaries far enough.

We could go further.

Now I've been criticized for advocating that people

push their boundaries because sometimes people get

caught . Sometimes people get fired. Sometimes people

lose their jobs because of pushing the boundaries too

far, but it's an interesting experience. They found they

didn't want to stay within those limitations that they

were pushing. Once people find they can survive out

side the limits, they're much happier. They don't want

to feel trapped. So I think we can urge people to push

the boundaries as far as they can, and if they get in

trouble , fine; that's not too bad if that's what they want

to do.

1 43

C H A P T E R 4

Educational Practice

"The more the people become themselves, the better the democracy"

PAU L O : Education always implies program, content, method,

objectives and so on, as I said yesterday. For me it has

always been a political question, not exclusively an edu

cational question, at what levels students take part in

the process of organizing the curriculum. I know that

this question has to have different answers according

to different places and times. The more people partici

pate in the process of their own education, the more the

people participate in the process of defining what kind

of production to produce, and for what and why, the

more the people participate in the development of

their selves. The more the people become themselves,

the better the democracy. The less people are asked

1 45


about what they want, about their expectations, the less

democracy we have .

M Y L E S : I use questions more than I do anything else . They

don't think of a question as intervening because they

don't realize that the reason you asked that question

is because you know something. What you know is the

body of the material that you're trying to get people to

consider, but instead of giving a lecture on it, you ask a

question enlightened by that . Instead of you getting on

a pinnacle you put them on a pinnacle. I think there's

a lot of confusion in the minds of academicians as to

what you mean when you say you have to intervene.

PAU LO : Yeah, i t's very good that you said this because I use

intervention exactly in the way you use it.

M Y L E S : Yes, I know you do, but you'd better try to explain

it a little better, because other people will misunder

stand you .

T H I R D P A RT Y : Myles, in those early days, how did you see

your role? How did you evolve your technique of inter

vention? What did you do?

M Y L E S : Well, I take the same position as Paulo , that you have

the responsibil ity, if you have some knowledge or some

insight, to share that with people. If you have a convic

tion, you have a responsibility to act on that conviction

where you can, and if you're doing education, you act

on it in an educational context.

I reacted to the way I was educated, which I thought

was miseducation. I thought there ought to be a better

way. I 've always resented being put down by teachers

showing their knowledge and presuming that I didn't

have any. The truth about the matter was that I was


in situations like this when I was in school in Bra

zil [Tenn. ] , where I knew more than the teacher, and

1 knew I knew more than the teacher. I started ex

perimenting with ways to get my ideas across without

putting people down, with trying to get them to think

and analyze their own experiences . So I rediscovered

what's long been known, that one of the best ways to

educate is to ask questions. Nothing new about that . I t's

just not widely practiced in academic life . I guess the

academicians give you a lecture on it, but they couldn't

practice it. So I just found that if I know something well

enough, then 1 can find a way in the discussion that's

going on to inject that question at the right time, to get

people to consider it . I f they want to follow it up, then

you ask more questions, growing out of that situation.

You can get all your ideas across just by asking ques

tions and at the same time you help people to grow and

not form a dependency on you. To me it's just a more

successful way of getting ideas across.

T H I R D PA RT Y : Then it becomes their idea.

M Y LE S : It becomes theirs because they 're the ones who come

to that idea, not because I said it or because of some

authority: it just makes sense. It makes sense because

it's related to the process and the thinking they 're going

through.

T H I R D PA RT Y : I t's kind of subversive isn't it?

M Y L E S : Well yes, I guess, if you say being subversive is that

you try to get your ideas across . I 've never hesitated to

tell anybody what I believe about anything if they ask

me. I see no reason to tell them before they get ready to

l isten to it, and when they ask a question, then they 're

1 47


ready to listen to it . I just don't see any point in wasting

your energy trying to force something on people . We

have a saying here. You probably have similar sayings

in your culture in Brazil . We say you can lead a horse

to water but you can't make him drink.

PAU LO : Yes.

M Y L E S : This is a problem they deal with in academia by hit

ting the horse over the head and beating on him till

they force his nose in the tub, and just to keep the blows

from continuing, he'll try to drink. My system is to make

him thirsty, so he'll volunteer to drink.

PAU LO : Yes.

T H I R D PA RT Y : But, Myles, did it take you some practice to

get to the point so you always knew how to handle those

questions?

M Y L E S : Oh, did it!

T H I R D PA RT Y : Let's talk about that a little bit .

M Y L E S : See, when I tell something like this , you think I'm

saying I was born with a gray beard , l ike I was born like

I am now.

T H I R D P A RT Y : It is confusing because you also said you

didn't believe in experimenting on people .

M Y L E S : Not on people but with people. You experiment with

people not on people. There's a big difference. They 're

in on the experiment. They 're in on the process . At

what point do you get good at something? I had a repu

tation for being good at leading discussions, but I didn't

have that reputation in the first years of the school,

when we were trying to figure out how to use our aca

demic knowledge on people.

For example, we always had the practice at High-


lander, back when I was director, of having the staff

acquainted with the area in which we were working.

There were two ways. We would respond to a student's

request for help or we'd just roam around the region

to find out what was going on. We needed to know

what was happening in the economic, social , and cul

tural realm where we were working, but we didn't come

in and make a lecture on it or write a book about it . We

used this knowledge to have insights out of which we

asked questions and led discussions. So you had to be

knowledgeable ; you had to know your subject . You had

to know more than the people that you were teaching

or you wouldn't have anything to contribute . You didn't

have to know more about where they were in their de

velopment. They knew more about that than you did .

You didn't have to know more about their experiences.

They were the world's authority on their own experi

ence and you need to value that , appreciate that .

Highlander has a videotape of a workshop in which

Mike Clark, the director at that time, asks one question,

and that one question turned that workshop around

and completely moved it in a different direction . Well ,

that waS one short question, but Mike had years of ex

perience in the region, out of which he asked that ques

tion . Now that's what I mean by using your content. Use

your familiarity with your subject, but use it as a basis.

First it's a matter of conviction that that's the way you

should deal with people, that you should respect them

and let them develop their own thinking without you

trying to think for them. But how do you do that? You

have to practice till you find out you know how to do

1 49


it , and then it's like anything else. Like a musician just

learning, sit down at the piano and start playing. You

just start doing it . I t's natural . You don't have to give it

a great deal of thought. You just intuitively say, "Well,

what can I do here?" And it kind of comes out, but

that's practice. That's practice .

PAU L O : Concerning this question of not respecting the

knowledge, the common sense of the people. Last week

I was in Recife leading a seminar for a group of educa

tors, and we were discussing precisely this question of

respecting knowledge of the people. A teacher told us a

very interesting story. She said that academic learning,

the fact of being an academic, is not bad. I t's just what

kind of academic. A student went to a fishing area to do

some research, and he met a fisherman who was coming

back from fishing. The academic asked, "Do you know

who is the president of the country?" The fisherman

said, "No, I don't know." "Do you know the name of

the governor of the state?" He said , "I'm afraid that I

don't know." And then the academic, losing patience ,

said , "But at least you know the name of the local au

thority." The fisherman said , "No I also don't know, but

taking advantage of asking these questions about names

of people, I would l ike to ask you : Do you know the

name of this fish?" And the academic said no. "But, that

one you know, don't you?" The academic said no. "But

this third one, you have to know," and the academic

said , "No, I also don't know." The fisherman said, "Do

you see? Each one with his ignorance ."

M Y L E S : There's a mountain story, same plot but different

story, of a traveling salesman here in the mountains. He

Educational Pmctice

got lost and he didn't know which way to go. He found

a little boy beside the road, and he said, "Hey there son,

do you know the way to Knoxville?" The boy said , "No,

sir." And he said, "Do you know the way to Gatlinburg?"

"No, sir." Well, he said , "Do you know the way to Sevier

ville?" The boy said , "No, sir." And he said , "Boy, you

don't know much, do you?" "No, sir, but I ain't lost ! "

T H I RD PA RT Y : I t seems to me that you keep coming back in

the conversations again and again to this point of the

delicate relationship between teaching, giving knowl

edge, and learning knowledge. Paulo talks about going

beyond the knowledge that the people bring. Now I sus

pect that you do that too. Paulo articulates going be

yond the knowledge of the people, and Myles articu

lates beginning with the knowledge of the people, so

somewhere in between there there's a practice that both

of you have.

M Y L E S : I have a personal philosophy of what I think the

world should be like, what life should be like. Now as I

said yesterday I have no rights that shouldn't be made

universal , and if I can understand this has any validity

and authenticity, then other people can understand it . I

start with that premise, so now the question is how you

expose people, move people on to where they 'll take a

look at this . That's the whole purpose of what I perceive

Highlander to be. You stay within the experience of

the people, and the experience is growing right there,

in what I call a circle of learners, in a workshop situa

tion. They 're growing because they 've learned from

their peers. They've learned not what they knew but

knew they didn't know. They learned something from


the questions you've raised. You've got them to think

ing, so right there before your eyes their experience is

changing. You're not talking about the experience they

brought with them. You're talking about the experience

that is given them in the workshop, and in a few days

time that experience can expand termendously. But if

you break the connection between the starting point,

their experience, and what they know themselves, if

you get to the place where what they know can't help

them understand what you're talking about, then you

lose them. Then you reach the outside limits of the

possibility of having any relationship to those people's

learning. So you have to be very careful in analyzing a

group to know that they 're ready to talk about ancient

Greece, if that throws light on the subject, or if they 're

ready to talk about what's happening in Patalonia or

Brazil, what's happened in the Soviet Union. Informa

tion that brings those things out may be a movie or may

be a discussion, because it's still part of their experi

ence. Their experience is not only what they came with.

If it only stays there , there's no use to start .

Now my experience has been that if you do this thing

right , carefully, and don't get beyond participants at

any one step, you can move very fast to expand their

experience very wide in a very short time. But you have

to always remember, if you break that connection, it's

no longer available to their experience, then they don't

understand it, and it won't be useful to them. Then it

becomes listening to the expert tell them what to do,

and they'll go hack home and try to do it without under-


standing it or even thinking they need to understand

it , you see. That's no good.

I never feel limited by this process at all . I feel lib

erated by it . I feel I can raise questions that are much

more far-reaching and much more in-depth and much

more radical, much more revolutionary, this way than

I could if I was talking to them and trying to explain

things to them. I use it as a way to get in more, not less .

I don't feel l ike I'm riding roughshod over people by

trying to get them to share my ideas. I don't have any

guilt problems about this at all . I think it's my responsi

bility to share what I believe in, not only in discussions

but in the way I l ive and in the way the workshops run

and in the way Highlander's run , the way life is .

Rosa Parks talks about her experience at High

lander, and she doesn't say a thing about anything/actu

ally that she learned. She doesn't say a thing about any

subject that was discussed. She doesn't say a thing about

integration . She says the reason Highlander meant

something to her and emboldened her to act as she

did was that at Highlander she found respect as a black

person and found white people she could trust. So you

speak not just by words and discussion but you speak

by the way your programs are run. If you believe in

something, then you have to practice it . People used to

come to Highlander when there were very few places,

if any, in the South where social equality was accepted .

We shared it by doing it and not by talking about it . We

didn't have to make a speech about it . We didn't even

have to ask questions about it . We did it . So, it's all tied

1 53


together, doing everything you can to share your ideas.

There's no such thing as just being a coordinator or

facilitator, as if you don't know anything. What the hell

are you around for, if you don't know anything. Just

get out of the way and let somebody have the space that

knows something, believes something.

T H I R D PA RTY: Are there specific examples in particular of

that delicate balance between bringing out the knowl

edge of the people and going beyond their knowledge,

as Paulo puts it , and how this is reflected in practice?

Theoretically, that is something that people under

stand , but in day-to-day practice , it's very often hard to

really come to terms with and to know exactly how to

do it.

MYL E S : It's quite obvious that you can't transfer an institu

tion, l ike it was obvious to me that you couldn't take

a Danish folk school and plunk it down in the moun

tains of east Tennessee any more than you could take a

Danish beech tree and cut it off at the top of the ground

and stand it up on the ground in the United States and

have it grow. When you get down to this transferring

level, helping somebody jump from one understanding

to another, then it gets rather ticklish as to what the dif

ference is between helping people grow in understand

ing and unfolding what's already there. There comes a

point when you've got to ask if this idea really fits. Will

this idea aid this process of growth? This is a problem

that has always bothered me, exactly how far you could

go in stretching people's experience without breaking

the thread. In radical education, people who claim to

1 54

EducationaL Practice

be Freirians to my mind make a lot of mistakes, making

assumptions about people's experience and knowledge.

PAU LO : I think that this is one of the main points of which

radical educators have to be aware. If someone is an

educator, it means then that this person is involved with

a process or some kind of action with others who are

named the students. This educator can be working, for

example, inside of the school and he or she has system

atized practice. He or she has a certain curriculum to

follow, and he or she teaches a particular content to the

students. It is the same for an educator who works out

of the school , out of the subsystem of education. For

example, an educator at Highlander does not have nec

essarily a curriculum, in the broader meaning of this.

The Highlander educator does not have necessarily a

list of subjects to talk about, to explain to students .

Nevertheless, there is something that for me is impos

sible, and that is the absence of some content about

which they speak. What must be the central difference

is that in Highlander's experience, the contents come

up from analysis, from the thinking of those who are

involved in the process of education-that is, not ex

clusively from the educator who chooses what he or she

thinks to be the best, for the students, but also those who

come to participate . It is as if they were suddenly in a

circle, like this house,* getting some distance from their

* The central meeting room at Highlander is circular in shape. Rock

ing chairs, a fireplace, and a spectacular view of the Smoky Mountains

provide a comfortable atmosphere for workshops.

1 55


� experience in order to understand the reasons why ther are having this kind of experience. It means that also in this setting, the educator, even though he or she is dif

ferent from a public-school educator, does not transfer

knowledge to the group of people who come here . As

far as I understand Myles's thinking and practice, with

his team here, I see that in all the fundamental moments

of Highlander'S history-in the thirties, in the fifties,

in the sixties, in the seventies, in every moment-the

educators here have been educators but have accepted

to be educated too. That is, they understood, even though

they did not read Marx, what Marx meant when he said

that "the educator himself must be educated."

M Y L E S : Yes. Bernice Robinson, the first Citizenship School

teacher, says that the most important thing she did was

to say the first time the people got together: "Now I'm

not a school teacher. I 'm here to learn with you ." Now

she didn't get that from Marx. She got that as a black

woman from her experience.

PAU LO : But what is fantastic, Myles, in the history of this ex

perience is that in learning with those who come here,

you also taught them, that it should be possible for edu

cators just to learn with the students. Both are engaged

in the process in which both grew up. Educators have

some systematic knowledge that the students necessarily

don't have yet . . . . And now I think that I am coming

near the question .

T H I R D P A RT Y : Sneaking up on it.

PAU L O : Yes, this is my way of working, of thinking. First I

try to make a circle so the issue can't escape. When the students come, of course, they bring with


them, inside of them, in their bodies, in their lives,

they bring their hopes , despair, expectations, knowl

edge, which they got by living, by fighting, by becoming

frustrated . Undoubtedly they don't come here empty.

They arrive here full of things. In most of the cases,

they bring with them opinions about the world, about

life. They bring with them their knowledge at the level

of common sense, and they have the right to go beyond

this level of knowledge. At the same time-I want to be

very clear, in order to avoid being understood as falling

into a certain scientificism-there are levels of knowl

edge about the facts they already know, which unveil

other ways of knowing, which can give us much more

exact knowledge about the facts. This is a right that

the people have, and I call it the right to know better

what they already know. Knowing better means pre

cisely going beyond the common sense in order to begin

to discover the reason for the facts.

Right now I can tell a small story. One month ago I

was talking at home with one of my friends, one of the

directors of the working class institute I spoke about

earlier. At the end of a course about workers' lives, a

young mim said, "When I came here I was sure that

I already knew many many things about these issues,

but I was not as clear about the reasons for them as I

am now." What this young worker meant is precisely

the central question you asked. That is, how, starting

from where people are, to go with them beyond these

levels of knowledge without just transferring the knowl

edge . The question is not to come to the classroom and

to make beautiful speeches analyzing, for example, the

1 57


pol itical authority of the country, but the question is

how to take advantage of the reading of reality, which

the people are doing, in order to make it possible for

students to make a different and much deeper reading

of reality.

The question is not to impose readings on students,

no matter that they are university students, but how

to put together critically, dialectically, the reading of

the texts in relationship to the contexts, and the under

standing of the contexts that can be helped through

the reading of texts. This also is the question , how to

make this walk with people starting from more or less

naive understanding of reality. Starting from people's

experiences, and not from our understanding of the

world, does not mean that we don't want the people to

come with us in order to go beyond us afterward. This

movement for me is one of the many important roles of

a progressive educator, and it is not always so easy.

I think that we have to create in ourselves , through

critical analysis of our practice, some qualities, some

virtues as educators. One of them, for example, is the

quality of becoming more and more open to feel the

feelings of others, to become so sensitive that we can

guess what the group or one person is thinking at that

moment. These things cannot be taught as content.

These things have to be learned through the example

of the good teacher.

M Y L E S : This is a problem, how we can have a body of knowl

edge and understanding and resist the temptation to

misread the interest of the people because we're look-


ing for an opportunity to unload this great load of gold

that we have stored up.

PAU LO : Not to do that, Myles, is one of the other virtues.

MYLES : Now that blinds us sometimes, it seems to me, from

observing the action of the people, the nonverbal lan

guage, because we are thinking verbally, and we're only

looking for verbal reactions and we don't read any

thing else.

PAU LO : The bodies .

MYLES: We don't want to see that because it wouldn't encour

age us to agree that they are with us. Now that's a real

problem that I have to struggle with . I 've observed that

I have two roles, one as a what you might call an educa

tor in relation to the situation and one as a person who

has subjective experience I 'd like to share with people ,

knowledge that I've picked up one way or another. I 've

got to keep those two things separate, but in my enthu

siasm, sometimes I mix the two.

One of the things I 've found is that if any one of a

group of people with similar problems asks a question,

then there's a good chance that the question will reflect

some of the thinking of the peers . Even if it doesn't,

everybody in that circle is going to listen to the answer

to that question, because one of their peers asked it .

They can identify with the questioner. It's a clue that

there's some interest there. Short of questions, I have

found that I 'm secure in a discussion when people actu

ally say what they perceive a situation to be. Then I

know where I am. But there's always gradations, from

the certainty up to the guessing, the temptation to guess

1 59


in favor of your subjectivity, your experience instead of

their experience. How do you deal with that?

PAU L O : Yes. There is another obstacle for such an attitude

vis-a-vis the object of knowledge and vis-a-vis the stu

dents as cognitive subjects , which is the dominant ideol

ogy introjected by the students no matter whether they

are workers or students of the university. That is, they

come absolutely convinced that the teacher has to give

a class to them.

M Y L E S : They have the answers.

PAU LO : Do you see? They come just to receive answers for

any questions they asked before. As you said , this is an

obstacle-how to confront a group of students who, in

perceiving that you are interested in knowing what they

know, think that you are not capable . Is it clear that the

students . . .

M Y L E S : . . . View you as an authority figure .

PAU L O : Yes. They expect you to give the first class in an old

style , and you say no, I would l ike first of all to talk a

little bit about the very content we should study this se

mester. And then one of the students can say to himself

or herself, this professor is not capable, above all if the

professor is a young person. Several graduate students

in Sao Paulo told me how they were obliged to start

immediately, giving a list of books and speaking a lot,

because the students felt insecure. I think that in such

a case, the teacher, understanding the situation, should

be 50 percent a traditional teacher and 50 percent a

democratic teacher in order to begin to challenge the

students, and for them to change a little bit too.

With regard to popular groups , I think if they did

1 60


not have too much experience in the school system, the

situation is a little bit different. Of course they can be

frightened because they think that the educator is a so

called intellectual and they don't see themselves also as

intellectuals. They cannot understand that . They think

that they don't have culture because the cultured man

or woman has first to come to university. Then it's nec

essary to exercise this discipline you talked about, the

discipline of controlling a second intellectual taste that

we intellectuals always have, which is speaking about

what we think that we know. In the works by Amilcar

Cabral there is something very interesting that some

times shows up very clearly, which is the dialecticity

between patience and impatience. Based on Amilcar I

always say that , in effect, we should work "impatiently

patient." There is a moment when we can go a little

farther and say something, and there is a moment in

which we should l isten more to the people.

M Y L E S : Yes . Sometimes I think of it in terms of a figure. You

try to stretch people's minds and their understanding,

but if you move too fast then you break the connection.

You go off and leave them, and so they aren't being

stretched in their thinking. In popular education, my

experience is that working and poor people all come

with an expectation. Since they 've been told they can

learn something, and what they 're to learn is the an

swers to their problems, they expect an expert with

answers . Even if they haven't been in school in a long

time, they 're socialized by society to look for an expert.

So I start out by acknowledging that that's why they 've

come. Then I say, you know you have a lot of prob-


lems. And I just use that as a jumping off place , so to

speak, to ask them to talk about their experience. Let's

see what's in your experience and not in the experience

of experts .

You set the stage for doing something that they 're

uncomfortable with. You know they 're uncomfortable

with it, and you have to work through that business

of getting them to be comfortable with trusting them

selves a little bit, trusting their peers a little bit. They

hear Mary say something and Susie says well, if they

listen to Mary, maybe they 'll listen to me. I t's a slow pro

cess, but once the people get comfortable with it, then

they begin to see that you aren't going to play the role

of an expert , except in the sense that you are the expert

in how they 're going to learn, not in what they 're going

to learn. It's a slow and tedious process but it seems

to work.

Now I' ll admit at times in situations I 've had to do

what you said, Paulo, do part of the old and part of

the new. I remember one time here in Tennessee, I was

trying to help a group of farmers get organized into a

cooperative, and they announced that I was coming to

speak at this country schoolhouse. Well , I knew their

expectation was that I would speak as an expert. I knew

if I didn't speak, and said "let's have a discussion about

this," they 'd say that guy doesn't know anything. So I

said , what I have to do is make a speech because I don't

want to lose the interest they 've built up, and I can't

change them instantaneously. So I made a speech, the

best speech I could . Then after it was over, while we

were still there , I said , let's discuss this speech. Let's dis-


cuss what I have said. Well now, that was just one step

removed, but close enough to their expectation that I

was able to carry them along. So the discussion ended

without resolving a lot of problems that I had raised.

They were analyzing what I had said . I couldn't get

them to talk about their own experiences because th�y

were still looking to the experts . Before I left I said ,

now it'd be good if we could talk about your experience.

We've talked about my experience, now let's talk about

yours. Could we come back next week? And you will be

the speakers . In this way I was able to get started with

them. I never had to make another speech . You do have

to make concessions like that.

"Highlander is a weaving of many colors"

T H I R D P A R T Y : Myles, I 'd like some more examples of what

Paulo's talking about in terms of the practice with popu

lar education. I know with the labor schools, for in

stance , at Highlander that you would do classes on par

l iamentary procedure and how to put out a newsletter

and very specific things that I know grew out of re

quests. With the civil rights movement, it was different .

Would you talk about how you got to those two differ

ent places. Or maybe they 're not different places at all .

How did you determine what to do in working with the

labor movement? And then how was it different with

the civil rights movement, if it was.

M Y L E S : No, the labor period was the first experience we'd

actually had in a structured sort of program. We had to

start with what they perceived their problems to be. Our


job was to develop local leadership for the new indus

trial unions and to help the new local union officers

understand better how to function. That was what they

wanted. Now what we wanted in addition to that was

to help them understand that they should work with

a larger community. They should work with farmers,

they should deal with integration, they should be part

of the world . We had our own agenda.

Now in form we tried as far as possible to do it the

way they would expect us to do, because it was relevant

to solving their problems. In the way Highlander was

run, we would do what we thought was important. Two

things just right off hand : One was that Highlander's

integrated, so we didn't have to talk about that problem,

we did it . And two, we based our whole thinking on

the premise that people learn what they do. Not what

they talk about but what they do. And so we made our

speech about social equality without saying anything,

but by doing it .

We also believed that they had to be good officials

of the unions and that a lot of them would be organiz

ers. They had to learn to think, make decisions-not

learn gimmicks , not learn techniques, but learn how

to think. So in an effort to help them understand the

importance of learning how to think, we had them,

with no strings attached, in full control of the week or

two weeks they were there. They made every decision

about everything: classes, teachers, visitors, subject mat

ter. They resisted that with everything they had because

they had never had an opportunity to make decisions

in a "school," and they thought that was our responsi-


bil ity. Now I dealt with that by having each group, at

the end of the session, say here is what we have learned

here, and here is what we propose the next group do.

We think we can share our learning with them and this

is what we proposed that they do. That was done every

session. When a new group came, I would say, this is

what the last group proposed you do. Now since you

haven't had any experience in making decisions about

these things, it's all new to you. The first day let's start

by doing what people like you thought would be good .

After the first day, in the evening, we will organize for

the week or two weeks. We'll set up committees-be

cause we try to get them used to using committees in

unions-on public relations, on discipline, on subject

matter, on visiting speakers, on relations with the com

munity, on running a co-op, because we were trying to

get them to understand the economic element in addi

tion to unions. So we turned it all over to them, and

they were in complete control. I mean they exercised

that control . The program was recognizable to them

in terms of what they had been told and it was similar

enough to schooling that it didn't seem too unfamiliar.

You've gotta have a structure that participants can feel

comfortable with until they begin to have something to

deviate from or add to. Now what they really do would

not change things very much from session to session.

The schedule was made by people like themselves, and

they recognized it as authentic. They would make a few

adaptations and changes as they went along.

We had somebody come to teach about the labor

board [National Labor Relations Board] who gave a


lot of things to read. The students said : "Hey, wait a

minute. We want to discuss this with you. We want to

ask you some questions." The visitor said: "It's all in this

book. Look it up." The student said : "We don't need

you. Just give us the books and go. We don't need you

if you don't know what's in them. If we're going to have

to read the books , then you go back to Washington, and

we'll sit here and read them." That's the way they dealt

with visiting speakers. They weren't cowed by anybody,

and we were happy about that , because they were be

ginning to take control of the situation . They 'd tell us

what to do all the time.

Now, in dealing with grievances, Zilphia was one of

the best. She used a lot of drama in teaching how to

handle grievances and kept people's interest by role

playing. That was pre-role-playing days, before it had

a name, but it was the same thing! The process, the way

she worked and the way I worked is one thing we had

in common. We not only talked about how to take up

a grievance and how to write one, we did it, we played

out the whole scene. Students did need to know the

technique of how to write up a grievance, if they could

write , and they needed to know that they had to have

arguments, but we said that won't win a grievance. What

wins the grievance is to have a strong group of workers

in your department. If you've got the workers with you,

then that's the way to get your grievances settled.

Now how are you going to get the workers with you?

You've got black people, women, old timers in your

plants. We'd go into why you had to involve everybody

and why you couldn't discriminate. It takes the power

166


of everyone united to get a grievance settled . So we'd

take even settling arguments, which is usually kind of

a technical thing, as a basis for educating people about

democracy. In everything we did , those elements came

out. In a class on union problems, the students would

raise problems that they had, and we'd discuss them.

And 1 knew the problems those people had because

I 'd dealt with the same kinds of people over and over

again. 1 knew more about their problems than they did ,

but 1 didn't tell them that. 1 never, never put down a

problem on the blackboard or listed a problem that they

didn't list, even though 1 knew it was their problem,

and 1 didn't do what I see some people doing today. I didn't put it in my own words and revise it to make it

clear. I 've seen that happen in these training programs,

where somebody will say something and then they 'll re

write it so it makes more sense. That's a put-down to a

worker to edit his or her way of saying things. So the

workers worded the problems. First 1 would ask, "What

do you know about that problem already?" Then they

said, "I don't know anything." Well okay, you know how

to survive, you're here. Your union sent you here . They

thought you had some leadership ability. I would push

them to name what they know, and they find right off,

with a l ittle struggle and a lot of embarrassment, that

there are some things that they can articulate. They

don't need any games or any playing around. The one

thing they know is their own experience. They don't

need to homogenize it with other people's experience.

They want to talk about their own experience. Then

other people join in and say, "Ah ha, 1 had an ex-


perience that relates to that." So pretty soon you get

everybody 's experiences coming in, centered around

that one person's experience, because that's an authentic

experience not a synthetic experience. Authentic. And

everybody recognizes authenticity. Workers recognize

authenticity. Academic people quite often don't want

authenticity. They want some kind of synthesis that

takes the experience a little bit away, so it'll be more

bearable to them, I suppose. But they recognize this is

authentic.

After everybody had the benefit of hearing every

body else's problem discussed, we would ask on the basis

of what you've learned that you knew-that you didn't

know before that you knew-and on the basis of your

fellow workers' experiences, now how do you think it'll

be best to deal with these problems? It was so enriching,

you see, to have a person learn that they knew some

thing. Secondly, to learn that their peers knew some

thing, and learn that they didn't have to come to me,

the expert, to tell them what the answers were. Then

they planned: here's how we'll deal with this problem

when we go back home.

Now that was the way the whole labor school was

run. We taught a lot of things that they needed to

know. They needed to make speeches. They needed

parliamentary law, which I don't believe in, but they

needed it . But they also needed, we thought , a lot of

other things . We tried to involve everybody in singing

and doing drama and dancing and laughing and tell

ing stories , because that's a part of their life. It's more

of a holistic approach to education, not just a bunch of

168


unrelated segments . The way people live was more im

portant than any class or any subject that we were deal

ing with. That's an extremely important experience .

They had that learning experience, making decisions,

living in an unsegregated fashion, enjoying their senses

other than their minds. It was that experience that was

probably worth more than any factual things that they

learned, although you know there were some factual

things that they learned.

This didn't mean that we didn't add to that mix.

Once you get people talking about a problem and

there's no solution within the group, which is often

the case, then you go outside the group and introduce

ideas and experiences that are related to the problem.

Workers in other places, in other countries, and in other

ages, all are relevant if they 're related to the prob

lems at hand. People's minds get opened up to wanting

to know all these things. They'll ask questions. How

did the labor movement get started in England? What

caused the revolution in Russia? Why do people call us

communists when we organize? I remember one time

I said just go to the encyclopedia and read about what

communism is , and they said, is it in the encyclopedia?

They thought it was something the manufacturing asso

ciation had cooked up! They read the definition and

they discussed that. They took an "encyclopedia class,"

but that was an extension of that experience . I didn't

say, now you need to know what communism is. If I 'd

said that , they wouldn't have ever bothered to read it .

We can use current examples. The Bumpass Cove people, for example, didn't know when they first came

169


here that they could know what toxic chemicals did to

people. They thought that that's something they had

to go to the health officials and the company officials

for. Even though they knew the officials were lying to

them, it didn't occur to them that there was any way for

them to find out for themselves. When they asked what

are these chemicals, Juliet Merrifield , who was working

with them, said well , let's go down to the l ibrary and

look it up-just l ike I said look up communism. They

ended up, as they say in the movie, making their own

list.* They didn't know they could know that when they

started out , because they 'd been denied the opportunity

to know that they could know about chemicals and their

effects . They thought that was in the realm of experts.

PAU L O : Listening to Myles, I felt challenged to make some

reflections about one of the points.

M Y L E S : Good. That's what I wanted you to do.

PAU LO : Of course I am in agreement with this global vision

you give us. The first reflection, which is good to under

line, is how difficult is the task of an educator. No matter

where this kind of educator works, the great difficulty

or the great adventure !-is how to make education

something which, in being serious , rigorous, methodi

cal, and having a process , also creates happiness and joy.

MYL E S : Joy. Yes-happiness, joy.

PAU L O : That difficulty is how to give an example to the stu

dents that in working on the practice, on the personal

experience, we necessarily go beyond what we did. For

* Lucy Massie Phenix, producer, You Got to Move: Stories of Change in the

South (New York: Icarus Films, 1985).


example, if I know critically what I did in planting

seeds, if I know what I did during the act of planting,

if I get the reason why, of course I go beyond what I

did. I had a kind of umbrella, a framework of knowl

edge, which was not so clear at that point. Beginning

with what I learned initially, I discovered lots of possible

extensions of knowledge, which were otherwise almost

invisible.

Then coming back to the question of joy, of serious

ness. I am afraid, Myles-maybe I am not humble in

saying that I am sure that you agree with me-that one

of the risks we have as educators is to think that the

practice of educating, of teaching, should be reduced

just into joy. Happiness. And then the educator would

not to have any kind of demand on the students, would

not make any kind of suggestion to the students to be

more rigorous in studying, because the teacher cannot

cut off the students' right to be happy. This transforms

the practice of education into a kind of entertainment.

The other risk is to be so serious that seriousness fights

against happiness. Then instead of having a childlike

practice, you have a very rigid face of an old and de

spairing figure ! Does it make sense? Don't teach l ike

this ; but a great many educators do.

For example, for me it is difficult to begin study

ing. Studying is not a free task. It's not a gift . Studying

is demanding, hard, difficult. But inside of the diffi

culty, happiness begins to be generated . At some point

suddenly we become absolutely happy with the results ,

which come from having been serious and rigorous.

Then for me one of the problems that we have as edu-


cators in our line is how never, never to lose this com

plexity of our action and how never to lose even one of the ingredients of the practice. I cannot understand a

school that makes children sad about going to school.

This school is bad. But I also don't accept a school in

which the kids spend all the time just playing. This

school is also bad . The good school is that one in which

in studying I also get the pleasure of playing. I learn

how to have intellectual discipline. Look, being disci

plined, democratically, is something that takes part of

life . It's vital for me to have some intellectual discipline

in order to get knowledge, in order to know better.

Then there is another point about which I would

like to make a comment. Myles said something very

important when he stressed the question of thinking.

It's absolutely necessary to teach how to think critically,

but-I don't know whether Myles agrees with me-it's

impossible for me in this kind of education to teach

how to think unless· we are teaching something, some

content to the students. I want to say that it's impos

sible to teach how to think by just thinking. That is, I

have to teach how to think, thinking about something

and then knowing something. But this is precisely what

this Highlander Center has done for the past fifty years.

Myles told us about asking people , If the advice of the

experts worked in the past, why then are you here now?

If you are here now because you were not satisfied

with the results of the other way of working, why didn't

we pick this way? Why not walk another road? When

Myles asked this, undoubtedly they were very envel

oped by his questions and his speech-not just thought,


but action . There was some content in that . He was just

awakening their memories concerning some knowledge

and concrete experiences. The content was there, but

not so easily seen sometimes. Because of that, it was

possible to challenge the group to think in a different

way and also to understand the need for getting a new

road . The acceptance of doing something different has

to do with the understanding of a former experience

in which there were subjects that were discussed. What

Myles did was to touch their memory about a subject

and to remake the road.

I think that it's really impossible to teach how to

think more critically by just making a speech about criti

cal thought. I t's absolutely indispensable to give a wit

ness, an example, of thinking critically to the students.

This is the reason why the experience here has been so

good. You always had here a subject that you discussed

together with the people, and in satisfying some of the

students' needs, necessarily the people went beyond the

subject matter.

M Y L E S : We've always done these things imperfectly. Always.

PAU LO : All of us work imperfectly.

M Y L E S : Always. I don't think I ever did a workshop in which

I didn't think later, my goodness I should've known

better than to do this. Or, if I had just thought fast

enough, I could've helped people understand this from

their experience. To this day, I never have the satis

faction of saying this is a perfect job, well done. I've

learned something in this job, I hope I can do better

next time, but I just have to keep on learning different

things.

173


I would say, just parenthetically, I started out back

when I was more book oriented teaching a course on

how to think ! Somebody had a little book on how to

think, and I thought the way to go about teaching

people how to think was to teach them what was in

the book.

T H I R D PA RT Y : You taught this at Highlander?

M Y L E S : Yes ! The first year. That's when we were really learn

ing. From then on I didn't find the book too help

ful, certainly, to use as text. I used the text from the

people's experiences after that. But I remember very

well starting that way, not knowing that these people

didn't have to learn the same way schooling taught

people. I wouldn't have known then, to use an example

that we talked about, that the people who came here

looking for experts really had the answer to that prob

lem through their experience. We've all come a long

ways in this, and of course there's a long ways to go.

T H I R D P A RT Y : When you were talking about not ever doing

anything perfectly, it seems to me that some of the best

learning that I had here as a staff member was in re

flecting on a workshop after we had done it , about what

we had done right and about what we had done wrong.

I wanted to hear you talk some about your own growth

as an educator with your peer educators at Highlander

and how that process developed over the years .

MYL E S : Well see, we all started out with similar academic

backgrounds. We were all philosophically socialists , so

we had similar goals . So we had to learn together, and

I don't mean it wasn't uneven. Some people learned faster or better than others, and some learned some-

174


thing that somebody else didn't learn, but we were peers

and so it was easy to communicate. We did some evalua

tions like you're talking about. If you look at the old

records , as you probably have , you'll see all kinds of

long analyses of what we were doing, what we believed

in, what was going wrong. We spent a lot of time being

very critical, and we invited criticism from the outside.

We were trying to get all the help we could in think

ing through the problems because we had a very defi

nite sense that we didn't know what we were doing. We

were really embarrassed by our inefficiency, to the place

where we were struggling. When we invited criticism

we got it. I remember that somebody said that I was

cruel. I was dealing with a group of young people, and

one of the girls cried because she said I made her very

unhappy and that I should make people happy, not suf

fer. I said , well , these were teenagers . When they grow

physically they have joy and pain. They have aches,

actually. Growing is a painful process, but they have joy

in being young. I mean what I'm doing with the mind is

the same as nature does with the body. I t's no different .

I think you should stretch people to their limits and our

limits. But those kinds of criticisms would come up.

Then there were criticisms from the left , that we

weren't making enough speeches telling people what to

believe , and we didn't have the right belief ourselves.

And from the right, saying we were revolutionaries,

that we were subverting the system. Someone criticized

us for getting money from capitalists and fighting capi

talism, saying you're biting the hand that feeds you. I

said, who else can feed us? In a capitalist society there's

175


no other place for money to come from. Money has

to come from the system, and people that we identify

with produce that wealth . We get the money where the

money is and use it where the people are. The critic

said , but don't you feel awkward about biting the hand

that feeds you? I said no, I enjoy just gnawing it up

to the shoulder. That was on a public TV program. It haunted me for years, the image of a one-armed capi

talist !

We had al l kinds of problems we had to deal with,

and that was part of education. We weren't just in the

mechanics of education. That was never much of a fea

ture at Highlander. We've talked more about it here

than we did for years . We just did it. I came out with a

strong conviction that nothing, no methodology or no

technique was as near as important as the way I did

things myself, in terms of my teaching other people. I f

I stopped having joy in learning, I could no longer help

give anybody else joy in learning.

PAU L O : Yes, of course.

M Y LE S : And you know what you do has to be compatible. If I

believe in social equality and don't practice it , then what

I say is hollow. You have to have that kind of consis

tency. That's why I'm less interested in methodology or

techniques than I am in a process that involves the total

person, involves vision, involves total realities . I think

of my grandfather, who was an illiterate mountaineer

and who had a good mind, although he couldn't write

his name. He used to say, "Son you're talking about all

these ideas, and you got your wagon hitched to a star,

but you can't haul anything in it that's not down on


earth." I know you have to have it hitched to the star,

and he did too, but it's also got to be down on earth

where something practical can be done. You have to tie

the practical with the visionary.

I think if I had to put a finger on what I consider

a good education, a good radical education, it wouldn't

be anything about methods or techniques. It would be

loving people first. If you don't do that , Che Guevara

says, there's no point in being a revolutionary. I agree

with that . And that means all people everywhere, not

just your family or your own countrymen or your own

color. And wanting for them what you want for yourself.

And then next is respect for people's abilities to learn

and to act and to shape their own lives. You have to have

confidence that people can do that . Now people ques

tion me on that. They say, how do you know that? Well ,

I 've had some good experiences. I 've gone through two

social movements, the industrial union movement and

the civil rights movement. I know people can know be

cause I know people can do things, and I know people

can die for what they believe in . I know that once people

get involved they 're willing to do anything they believe

is right . I'm not theoriz.ing about that, and I'm more

fortunate than most people-I think because a lot of

people don't know those things like I do, having lived

through it and been a part of it . I think our job is to

try to figure out ways to help people take over their

own lives.

The third thing grows out of caring for people and

having respect for people's abil ity to do things, and that

is that you value their experiences. You can't say you re-

1 7 7


spect people and not respect their experiences. These

are the kind of elements that seem to me to be im

portant, rather than methodology or techniques. High

lander 's a good example of it as an educational entity.

It is hard to talk about Highlander. Highlander can't be

described as an organization because it isn't departmen

talized and mechanistically conceived. It's more of an

organism, therefore it's hard to describe. It's a mosaic

or a piece of weaving. Back in 1 932, if you used colors ,

it would be a certain type of color that dominated. Later

on, another color came in and merged with that, and

as Highlander changes the series of colors changes, but

always some of the old and always some of the new.

There's never anything lost. Now two colors may be

blended , and always hopefully something new is intro

duced, so the weaving is still being made. Highlander

is a kind of a weaving of many colors, some blend and

some clash, but you know it's alive. People during one

historical period know that period. We knew the De

pression period when we started Highlander. We knew

both the students and activists . We were all student

leaders and activists before we started Highlander, so

we brought that into the beginnings of Highlander.

Later on the civil rights movement came along, and that

came into Highlander and colored a lot of things . We

deliberately set out to be involved in civil rights, and

that brought changes in the process. I t actually changed

the composition of the staff. We had more black people.

It changed the composition of the board. Movements

change what goes on and how things are organized .

Later on we had these dull periods, what I call the


•

organizational period, like we're in now, and we had

that kind of "me" period, where people thought that

consciousness was limited to their own conscious, some

thing inside themselves. I guess some people thought it

would start there and spread to society, but most of it

kind of dead-ended there, as far as I could find out . I f

it starts there it stays there.

You have to have people at Highlander who come

out of those periods, to bring in new ways of doing

things . We want and welcome new ways of doing things.

Another thing that we started out talking about

during the very first pre-Highlander days was that we

would be international. We were part of the world but

we had to start locally. That has been coming in and out

of Highlander's history all along, and now it's playing

a bigger role because Highlander's much more Third

World-conscious. We think of ourselves as being part of

a Third World. Helen Lewis· says that the places we're

working are in the peripheries within the periphery.

They're the Third Worlds within the Third World, the

neglected area. That concept has tied us in with people

all over the world . That's one of the colors that has

always run through our tapestry. Sometimes it gets bold

and sometimes it fades out. Now it's important . The

people who come into Highlander bring new insights ,

but there's still a part of the old, still part of the same

piece of tapestry.

Helen Matthews Lewis, Linda Johnson, and Donald Askins, Colonial· ism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case (Boone, N.c': Appala

chian Consortium Press, 1978.)

1 79


"Con8icts are the midwife of consciousness"

THIRD PARTY: You mentioned before the concept of respon

sibil ity, but at the same time the concept of nonneu

trality, political choice . I'm an educator. I am educated

by Harvard. At the same time I have a political point

of view. The problem is how to how to share, like Myles

said , share my point of view without imposing it , with

out manipulating people. In practical terms it's a very

difficult line.

PAULO: I think that this problem is really very important and

deserves to be discussed. While having on one hand to

respect the expectations and choices of the students,

the educator also has the duty of not being neutral, as

you said . The educator as an intellectual has to inter

vene. He cannot be a mere facilitator. He has to affirm

to himself or herself. I think that this issue is more or

less like the problem of practice and its theory. Do you

say that it involves also the question of the authority of

the teacher, the freedom of students, the choice of the

teacher, the choice of the student, the role the teacher

has to teach, the role the teacher has to answer ques

tions, to ask questions, to choose the problems? Some

times the teacher has the role of leading or the role of

speaking, but the teacher has the duty to come from

speaking to into speaking with, for example.

Then for many people , going beyond some risks that

we always have in this relationship is something that is

not clear. For example, one of the mistakes we can com

mit in the name of freedom of the students is if I, as a

teacher, would paralyze my action and my duty to teach.

180


In the last analysis, I would leave the students by them

selves, and it would be to fall into a kind of irresponsi

bility. At this moment, afraid of assuming authority, I

lose authority. Authority is necessary to the educational

process as well as necessary to the freedom of the stu

dents and my own. The teacher is absolutely necessary.

What is bad, what is not necessary, is authoritarianism,

but not authority.

I f I do that, if I fall with this kind of irresponsibility,

instead of generating freedom, I generate license, and

then I don't accomplish my responsibility of teaching.

The other mistake is to crush freedom and to exac

erbate the authority of the teacher. Then you no longer

have freedom but now you have authoritarianism, and

then the teacher is the one who teaches . The teacher is

the one who knows. The teacher is the one who guides.

The teacher is the one who does everything. And the stu

dents, precisely because the students must be shaped,

just expose their bodies and their souls to the hands of

the teacher, as if the students were clay for the artist, to

be molded. The teacher is of course an artist, but being

an artist does not mean that he or she can make the

profile, can shape the students. What the educator does

in teaching is to make it possible for the students to be

come themselves. And in doing that, he or she lives the

experience of relating democratically as authority with

the freedom of the students.

I t's the same issue, for example, that we have in

the relationship between leadership and masses of the

people, between the leadership of a progressive paTty

and the great masses of the people. What is the role


of the leadership? It could not be just to look at the

masses. The role of leadership is also to lead the masses

while learning with them and never imposing on them.

Even I accept that in some moments both teachers and

political leaders have to take the initiative in order to

do something that is necessary, and it's not possible to

wait for tomorrow. But for me, in any case, the next day

the teacher as well as the leadership have to begin to

explain the reasons why it is necessary to take initiative .

In the last analysis, for me it is impossible to take the

initiative without explaining why it was necessary.

Because of the importance of this issue, I thought

to come back, Myles, to this point in our conversation.

As far as I have understood the work of this place , of

this institution, respect for communities here does not

mean the absence of responsibility on the part of the

educators. But we have to recognize that it is not easy.

And we also have to assume that the educators have to

have initiative.

THIRD PARTY: Myles, can I just add to that one thing. I t

occurred to me, Paulo, that you always speak of educa

tion from the primary level through the university and

including the kind of community education that High

lander does. Myles , you speak about adult education

for social change, working with people in communities,

and I wondered if that makes any difference in the way

that you approach this particular issue.

MYLES: Yes I think it does . I think of education as a cradle

to-the-grave education. I use the term education in con

trast to schooling. I decided before Highlander was

started that I wanted to work with adults , and the rea-


sons were that in growing up, commencement speakers

always made the same speech that young people are the

future leaders of this country. I t's up to young people

to make this a decent country and solve these problems.

And I discovered what everybody else discovered, that

they never had any intention of letting the people they

were talking to do anything about society. I t's a kind

of pacification speech. The adults run society. Students

don't run society. They have very little to say within the

schools let alone society, the larger society. So I decided

I wanted to deal with the people who had the power,

if they wanted to use it, to change society, because I was interested in changing society. When we started

the Highlander Folk School at Monteagle , that thinking

was confirmed by a conversation I had with a wonder

ful woman, May Justus, who was a neighbor and later

a board member. She's published fifty-seven children's

books. She even had a better record of publication than

you have , Paulo! You just have sixteen? She's got fifty

seven! But hers are for children, and they 're very thin .

May Justus came to that isolated, mountain commu

nity ten years or more before Highlander started. And

she would have been a model teacher. She was a moun

tain woman who came from the neighboring county

oveT here , back in the hills. She had terrific imagination

and love for children and love fOT teaching. She taught

my children, ThoTsten and Charris . May told me how

in grade school, the children were really enthusiastic

about l ife and how she helped them within the confines

of the school to have values , to help them love, to have

ambition to do something. Then with tears in heT eyes,


she said the community swallowed them up and they

were absorbed into the lethargy of the community, into

the hopelessness of the community. They blotted out

all that she had been able to get them to understand in

school . In other words, she was saying the community

is powerful. Adult society is powerful.

I could give dozens and dozens of illustrations, but

my point is that I came to the conclusion I wanted to

work with the people who, if they chose to-and I was

going to try to help them choose-had the power to

change society.

Not that I don't appreciate and value other kinds

of education, other levels of education. I just chose to

work with the people who, historically and practically,

are in a position to change society if they choose to so.

My idea was to help people choose to change society

and to be with the people who were in a position to do

that . I took this a step further. I wasn't interested in

mass education like a schooling system. I was interested

in experimenting with ways of working with emerging

community leaders or organizational leaders, to try to

help those people get a vision and some understanding

of how you go about realizing that vision so that they

could go back into their communities and spread the

ideas. I had never any intention of going into anybody

else's community as an expert to solve problems, and

then leaving it for those people to follow up. I thought

the way to work was to identify people who had a poten

tial for leadership and use that very straightforward

simple approach.

I chose to work with organizations that, as far as I


could tell , had a potential, a potential for structural re

forms to lead to social movements and to lead to revolu

tionary change. I was always looking for organizations

that were not aimed at reinforcing the system but aimed

at changing the system insofar as I knew. Now I wasn't

looking for people who were revolutionaries, because I

wouldn't have had anybody to work with. I looked for

people whose organizations had a potential for mov

ing from limited reforms into structural reforms. It

was a very selective group. First I selected adults. Then

within that group, I selected people who had a poten

tial for providing leadership for structural change and

who had a vision of a different future-different from

those who claimed to be neutral and who supported the

status quo.

That was my rationale, and I never faced this di

chotomy of not being able to share what you had with

people for fear you'd be a propagandist, because my

feeling was that there's no such thing as neutrality. The

people who use that label are people who unknowingly,

for the most part , are dedicated to the support of the

status quo. Now to assume that they do not impose ideas

on people is a proposition I can't accept . They had an

advantage to those of us who want to change society be

cause they are part of society. The people are already in

the society they advocate, in the society they 're for, so

they learn by doing the kind of thing that the so-called

neutrals want them to do. We don't have that advan

tage. I've never felt so powerful that I thought I was

dominating people when I shared my ideas with them.

PAULO: But , Myles, for me that kind of problem is not in


your practice or in mine, but this kind of practical prob

lem really exists for many educators.

MYLES: Yes, I know.

PAULO: Sometimes they are not clear. Some prefer to hide

their authoritarian choice with a speech that does not

make the problem clear. This is the reason why I found

it very interesting that Myles brought this question into

the conversation between us. Of course it's not a prob

lem for you and for your educators, but it maybe is

a problem for many other people in this country and

in Latin America. Some of them may be authoritarian,

those who say: "But the experience of Highlander is

laissez-faire. I t's a kind of l iving in peace, leaving people

by themselves . They are not interfered with." Then it's

necessary to discuss this question theoretically.

MYLES: Well, I 'm not saying it's not important to discuss.

I'm just saying that we understand that the people who

claim to be neutral, and call us propagandists because

we are not neutral, are not neutral either. They're just

ignorant. They don't know that they 're supporters of

the status quo. They don't know that that's their job.

They don't know that the institution is dedicated to per

petuating a system and they're serving an institution.

They have influence nevertheless.

PAULO: Many times , Myles, they know really that they are

not neutral , but it is necessary for them to insist on

neutrality.

THIRD PARTY: I want to go back to the issue of manipu

lation. You said that there's a clear difference between

having authority and authoritarianism. I 'm trying to

figure out different ways people get the authority they

186


have . Now I want to know what authority you think is

legitimate authority.

PAU LO: Let's look at that in a very practical way. First of all,

let us take a situation at home, in the relationship be

tween the father and the mother and the kids. I am

very sure, absolutely sure, that if the father, because

he loves his kids, lets them do what they want to do

and never shows the kids that there are limits within

which we live, create , grow up, then the father does

not assume vis-a.-vis the kids the responsibility he has

to guide and to lead . And what is beautiful, I think,

philosophically is to see how, apparently starting from

outside influence, at some point this discipline begins

to start from inside of the kid . That is, this is the road

in which we walk, something that comes from outside

into autonomy, something that comes from inside. That

is the result.

I t's interesting to see the etymology of education.

It means precisely a movement that goes from outside

to inside and comes from inside to outside. Then the

experience of this movement in life is experience of

the relationship between authority and freedom. It is

a disaster when father and mother fight against them

selves and are not able to give a vision to the kids. I am

not saying that the father and the mother never should

discuss, because I bel ieve in conflicts . Conflicts are the

midwife of consciousness . I am not saying the parents

should never fight; they need to fight from time to time.

They are not equal and they could not be, but they

are not antagonists if they're l iving together. They are

antagonists if they lose love.


Now if you go from home into a classroom, it's the

same. The nature continues to be the same. That is, the

teacher's not the father and the teacher's not the uncle.

The teacher is the teacher. He or she has a personality.

He's teacher and not uncle and not father or mother,

but he has authority. It means that he has some space

in which he or she has to accomplish some necessary

duties from the point of view of the development of

the kids. If the teacher does not work like this, if the

teacher is too hesitant, if he or she is not competent,

if he does or she does not show the students that he

has stability and security from an emotional and intel

lectual point of view, it is difficult to teach. How is it

possible to teach without revealing to the students that

I am afraid, that I'm insecure. My insecurity destroys

my necessary authority with the students . But the other

side is how, in assuming the duty of having authority, of

living the authority, to balance the necessary authority

with the space of freedom of the kids . Then the teacher

has to let the kids know that he or she also fights for his

or her freedom in another dimension of life-for ex

ample , to get a much better salary. The students have to

learn with the teacher that teachers also fight in order

to free themselves.

For me it is impossible to separate teaching from

educating. In educating I teach. In teaching I edu

cate. But sometimes you can see some strange behaviors

in which there is apparently a separation between one

thing and the other. Maybe a student says to another,

remembering school days, "Do you remember Profes

sor Peters?" "Oh yes, I remember. He knew how to give

188

EducationaL Practice

good classes of mathematics , but no more than that ."

You see? I t's difficult for students to have a good mem

ory of a teacher who never assumed his or her authority,

of a teacher who never established limits.

THIRD PART Y : You speak as if a vision is important in the

parent and the teacher. Development of autonomy is

part of your vision .

PAU LO: Yes .

TH IRD PART Y : What if the vision isn't the same? What if

the teacher doesn't believe in autonomy for the student

or the parent doesn't believe in autonomy? In other

words, that's a value that is very important to you and

it's very important to Myles . Myles talks about empower

ing people. He talks about choosing leaders who are

going to make a difference. So when you talk about

how people have authority, I hear you saying they have

to have a vision as very important but I hear more. I

hear the vision has to be a specific way. So you're merely

saying something very specific about the philosophy of

these teachers and these parents?

P A U L O : Yes. I insist so much on the clarity of parents and

teachers concerning their vision , concerning what they

think about the world , about the present, about the

future. For me it should take part of the permanent

formation of the educator. Your question was how to

confront and how not to break down the relationship

between authority and freedom-that is , how to share.

There are occasions in which it's almost impossible to

share. For example, how is it possible for me to share

my vision with a convinced reactionary. I cannot share .

But maybe I can share with him or her some knowledge

189

Educational Pmctice

about reality, and in doing that maybe I can change him

or her from the point of view of my vision .

I don't know whether I am going too far from your

question, but i t's very interesting to see how it is possible

to convert individuals of the ruling class-but never

the ruling class as a class. Do you see? I t's very inter

esting. And because of that I think that seminars and

workshops l ike you have had here for over fifty years

are such an important source. I can realize, Myles , how

many people over these years had the opportunity to

become converted as individuals-but as a class, never.

For example, Marx; Marx was converted. Fidel Castro

was converted . Che Guevara was converted. I hope that

we are being converted .

Because of this, the security of the educator is also

important-his or her capacity of loving, of under

standing others though without accepting the position

of the others, and the ability not to be angry just because

you are different. Not to say it's impossible to speak to

you because you are different from me. That is, the

more secure you are, the clearer your vision, the more

you know that you are learning how to put the vision

into practice. You know that you are very far from real

izing your dream, but if you don't do something today,

you become an obstacle for hundreds of people not yet

born. Their action in the next century depends on our

action today. I think that this kind of educator has to

be clear about that.

I t's impossible for me just to think of my dream with

out thinking about those who are not yet in the world .

I have to have this strange feeling to love those who

190


have not come yet, in order to prepare . It is a collective

practice , and it means that the presence of those who

are al ive today is important. Those who come tomor

row will start acting, precisely taking what we did as the

starting point. This is how history can be made. Marx

said men make history and are made by history, and

men make history starting from some reality in which

they find themselves, from the reality that they were

given. We are now dealing with the present in order

to create the future. We are now creating the future

by the formation of the present. We are creating the

future present for the new generation , from which they

will make history. For these reasons, I think it is abso

lutely indispensable that educators be secure, capable,

and have a capacity for loving and for curiosity.

M Y L E S : Curiosity is very important I think, and I think too

much of education, starting with childhood education,

is either designed to kill curiosity or it works out that

way anyway. As you were talking, I was thinking when

Charis and Thorsten were l ittle, we had a boat on the

lake, and of course to the little kids to ride in that boat

was just about the epitome of anything you could find.

Then there was a big bluff at the edge of the moun

tain, where you could break your neck if you fell off,

but it was a popular place for people to go. Those were

the two things they most wanted to do. Now there's a

problem. How do you keep your kids from drowning

in a boat or from falling off the bluff? There are two

ways to deal with that problem. One is to get rid of the

boat and build a fence around the bluff. That'd take

care of those two. We didn't always agree on everything,


as any husband and wife shouldn't, but Zilphia and I

chose not to solve the problem by removing the prob

lem, but to place restrictions on Thorsten and Charis

that would make them remove the boat and build the

fence within themselves. We were criticized for saying

to them: "There are limits. You cannot do this." Some

of our liberal educational friends said we shouldn't say

no. We said : "Well, we love our kids. We're going to

discipline them to learn within themselves not to do

that." That was a deliberate choice.

Now I contend that the people who remove the boat

take away the incentive for kids learning to swim so

they can ride in the boat. They cripple them in having

control and making decisions. The people who remove

the boat and build the fences forget to tear them down

when the kids get big enough to use them. In adult

life it's the same thing. You know there are people who

are never allowed to do things that they could do. Help

people develop within themselves . I 've carried over that

way of thinking in a lot of situations. I think when edu

cators go into an organization or a community as out

side experts with the answers, they're taking the boat

away or they 're building the fence . They're not letting

the people have to face up to dealing with their own

problems, and they cripple them by not allowing them

to make their own decisions .

You see, I'm getting back to what he asked. Do you

tell people what you know is good for them, or do you

let them flounder around and find out for themselves,

maybe helping them explore possibilities? Do you set


up situations in which they can learn but use that as a

learning experience instead of a telling experience?

PA U L O : Yes, but what I want to say, Myles , is that in the

process of helping people discover, there is undoubtedly

teaching.

M Y L E S : Sure it's teaching.

PAU L O : I t's impossible for me to help someone without teach

ing him or her something with which they can start

to do by themselves. That is my own testimony of re

spect for them. It is consistent as a way of teaching. Not

necessarily of teaching a certain content or . . .

MYLE S : Or a fact.

PAU L O : But immediately I need also to teach some content,

do you see? I agree with you. My choice is l ike yours,

but in trying to do what you did, maybe-in a different

space, different culture, different history-less is then

needed. I always was teaching. No matter that I am

under the tree talking with some people. This is for me

absolute. I have to assume that, you see . I have noth

ing against teaching. But I have many things against

teaching in an authoritarian way.

THIRD PART Y : When most people talk about teaching, they

talk about content as if it has a power of reality that is

greater than the individual . Do you assume that what

you teach about is true or are you always open to the

possibility that you're wrong and that the person you're

teaching may be right?

PAUL O : Of course I am. I am constantly open, precisely be

cause of the limits of the act of knowing. I am sure

that knowing is historical, that it's impossible to know

193


without the history of human beings . Now I don't want

to discuss this question theologically. It means that it

is in the social experience of history that we as human

beings have created knowledge. It's because of that that

we continue to recreate the knowledge we created, and

create a new knowledge. If knowledge can be over

come, if the knowledge of yesterday necessarily does

not make sense today and then I need another knowl

edge. It means that knowledge has historicity. That is,

knowledge never is static . It's always in the process .

Then if I recognize my position as a cognitive sub

ject, as a subject capable of knowing, my first position

has to be a humble one vis-a-vis the very process of

knowing, and vis-a-vis the process of learning in which I

as teacher and the students as the students are engaged

in at a certain moment in a certain class. I am humble

not because I want to be agreeable. I don't accept being

humble for tactical reasons .

THIRD PARTY: But authentically.

PAULO: Yes, I am humble because I am incomplete. Just be

cause of that. This is not because I need people to love

me, though I need that people love me, but I don't

have to make any kind of trap for the love . Do you see?

Then if I understand this process, I am open, abso

lutely open, every time to be taught by the students .

Sometimes we are mistaken in our understanding of

reality. We are even mistaken in our knowing of the

knowledge. I don't know if it's good English , but some

times we are mistaken in the process of reknowing. For

example, a student suddenly says: "Professor, I think

that you are wrong. This is not like this. The question

194


is different." Then he or she satisfies you. I have had

experiences like this , and it is necessary to accept that

immediately and to assume a new way of speaking about

the issue. Of course, to the extent that you belong to

another generation, that you have been serious in the

process of teaching-to the extent that you read, that

you study, that you develop your curiosity-you have

more possibility to clarify the search of the students ,

than the students have. Less experienced intellectually,

they have less chance, but it does not mean that they

don't have the possibility to help us.

Because of that, one of the virtues I think that we

educators have to create-because I am sure also that

we don't receive virtues as gifts ; we make virtues not

intellectually, but through practice-one of the virtues

we have to create in ourselves as progressive educators

is the virtue of humility.

T H IRD PARTY : Myles, the reason that I asked the question of

Paulo is that you said something that could sound very

authoritarian, which was, "When I know something is

good for people I should do something about it".

PAULO: I t's a very good question.

M Y L E S : When I say I do something about it, what I do about

it is to try to expose them to certain experiences , ways

of thinking, that will lead them to take a look at what

I believe in. I think when they take a look at it, there's

a chance that they might come to the same conclusion.

They 've got to come to that conclusion themselves. And

if I really believe in what I want people to believe in,

I don't tell them about i t . I don't as an authoritarian

figure say you must bel ieve it. I think I know much more

195


about how people learn than that. I try to find ways

to expose them to learning processes that would finally

lead them to take a look at my conclusion . That's all I

can do. Once they take a look at it , if they don't accept

i t , then I 've gone as far as I can.

THIRD PART Y : What about the notion, though, that through

the experience of working with them you may decide

that what you believe was wrong, and that they may

have a better perception of that than you did.

M Y L E S : Well I think you have to divide that into principles.

When I say what I believe, I'm talking about prin

ciples such as love and democracy, where people control

their l ives .

THIRD PART Y: Your vision .

M Y L E S : My vision. Now the strategy for my vision, the ap

proaches and processes, I've learned from other people.

I 'm always learning new ways of doing, but frankly, I

haven't really changed my overall vision . My vision is so

far off, in terms of the goal, that there's been nothing

to shift my vision . For example, my vision was clari

fied politically during the Depression when we were

faced with capitalism coming apart. There was a social

ist alternative and a fascist alternative, an authoritarian

and a democratic alternative. I chose at that time, out

of that experience and out of my religious ethical be

liefs, to opt on the side of a democratic solution to the

problems, not an authoritarian solution . That's frozen

into a principle. I bel ieve in democracy versus authori

tarianism. That hasn't changed . What has changed is an

understanding of the capital ist system . If you 're going

to ch a n ge a system, you have to understand it , and I

1 96


understood it less well then than I understand it now.

I 've learned a lot about how you work with people, and

I 've learned a lot about what I l ike to call subvalues .

Those basic principles that I want to share with people

have been modified , extended-not limited-and have

become more concrete in my imagination . I hold these

principles more firmly than I did before, so that vision ,

so that long range goal is what I want to share.

As for the process of getting there, everybody has

to work those things out on their own. I believe that

there are many truths, many untruths, and there are

many right ways to do things and many wrong ways

to do things. Quite often I 've said any kind of prob

lem has five or six good solutions and five or six bad

solutions. What I try to get people to do is choose one

of the good ways instead of one of the bad ways, but

not influence which one, because that depends on how

people function, what people's backgrounds are. The

people who grew up after I did, who have a different

background, came to their conclusions through differ

ent processes , but their processes are as valued as mine.

I don't question that.

197

C H A P T E R 5

Education and Social Change

"You have to bootleg education"

T H I R D P A RT Y : Education is political, but is politics educa

tional? In our experience, if you're beginning as High

lander does, outside of the formal classroom, if you're

beginning with the groups involved in social change,

then . . .

PAULO : I t's political.

T H I R D PARTY : SO where does education fit within political

struggle?

MY LES: That's very interesting, especially with Paulo's prem

ise. I think all of us at Highlander started out with the

idea that we were going to do adult education. We've

called our work adult education. We thought of our

selves as educators. We deliberately chose to do our

education outside the schooling system. At that time,

there was a lot of discussion about whether you should

1 99


try to reform education, which is what we were con

cerned about , by working inside the system, because if

you worked outside the system , you couldn't influence

the system. The argument was that you could change

the system. We concluded that reform within the sys

tem reinforced the system, or was co-opted by the system.

Reformers didn't change the system, they made it more

palatable and justified it, made it more humane, more

intelligent. We didn't want to make that contribution to

the schooling system . But we knew if we worked out

side the system, we would not be recognized as educa

tors, because an educator by definition was somebody

inside the schooling system. Nevertheless , we decided

we'd work outside the system and be completely free to

do what we thought was the right thing to do in terms

of the goals that we set for ourselves and the people

we were working for. Whether we had any recognition

or even if we had opposition, that wouldn't affect our

position. We said we could go further in trying to ex

periment. We were going to experiment with ways to

do social education, and we could carry on that experi

ment outside with more validity than we could inside

the system, because we didn't have to conform to any

thing. Nobody could tell us what to do. We could make

our own mistakes , invent our own process.

I t wasn't surprising to us that we were not considered

educators. We were condemned as agitators or propa

gandists, the most kindly condemnations, and mostly

we were called communists or anarchists or whatever

cuss words people could think up at the time. Inter

estingly enough, the people inside the school system

200


almost unanimously said Highlander had nothing to do

with education . They said we did organizing, we did

propaganda. Even the people who financed and sup

ported Highlander didn't claim we were doing educa

tion. They just liked what we were doing, but it wasn't

education . And the truth about the matter is that very

few people in the United States were calling what we

did at Highlander education. Practically no educational

institutions invited any of us to talk about education .

We were invited to talk about organizing, civil rights,

international problems-but education. no. We were

not educators .

P A U L O : You were activists.

M Y L E S : We were activists , yes. We were not neutral. We

weren't "educators." The change came, and I think I 've

written you about this, after the Brazilian government

made a contribution of Paulo Friere to the United States

by kicking him out of Brazil. He came to Harvard, and

he started talking about the experience of learning. He

started talking about out-of-schooling education.

PAU LO: Yes.

M Y L E S : And 10 and behold , people started looking around

and they said , "Oh, you know maybe there is something

outside schools we could call education." And it was

only then that people started saying Highlander was

doing education . I can just practically date it. I can date

it. Somebody who was writing a book about Paulo asked

me several years ago what I thought his greatest contri

bution to the United States was, and I told them that as

far as I was concerned his greatest contribution was to

get people in academic circles to recognize there's such

20 1


a thing as experiential education. So I think when High

lander was first recognized to the extent that we were

invited to talk about education was after Paulo made

this kind of education respectable by being a professor

at Harvard.

THIRD PART Y : But you had done the Citizenship Schools,

and you called those "schools ," and you had been in

volved in the international adult education movements.

MYL ES: We always called it education. I'm just saying the

"schooling" people never called it education. We always

thought it was the best education. We didn't have any

problem about this , but we weren't recognized by aca

demicians as doing education .

When we did our Citizenship Schools in the fifties,

they were recognized as being successful in teaching

people to read and write. People wrote articles about

it, talked about it, and everybody knew people were

learning to read and write. They still wouldn't call it

education because Highlander was doing it outside the

system. That's my whole point. That the word edu

cation didn't include out-of-school learning. It never

bothered us in the sense that we weren't dependent on

their acceptance-not that we didn't want their good

will and not that we didn't have a lot of their good will .

PAULO : But Myles I would like to come back a little bit to the

question of working inside of the system and outside

of the system. I think that if we ask ourselves what we

mean by system, we discover that when we are speaking

about the educational system. In fact, we are speaking

about a subsystem in relation with the big system, the

productive system, the political system, the structural

202


system. For example, as a fantastic educator you were

always creating these extraordinary spaces-political ,

cultural, and educational spaces within the system-as

you have since the 1 930S with Highlander. If we con

sider this in relation to the system, of course we discover

that it is out of the subsystem of education but that it is

inside of the system.

M Y L E S : I 'm talking about the school system. I 'm talking

about the schooling system, not the social system.

PAU L O : Yes, but for me, Myles, there is another aspect. The

ideal is to fight against the system taking the two fronts,

the one internal to the schooling system and the one ex

ternal to the schooling system. Of course, we have much

space outside the schooling system, much more space to

work, to make decisions, to choose. We have more space

outside the system, but we also can create the space in

side of the subsystem or the schooling system in order to

occupy the space. That is, I think politically, every time

we can occupy some position inside of the subsystem,

we should do so. But as much as possible, we should

try to establish good relationships with the experience

of people outside the system in order to help what we

are trying to do inside. The intimacy of the schooling

system is so bureaucratized that sometimes we despair;

that is, after two, three, four, ten years of working, we

don't see complete results of our efforts and we begin

not to believe anymore. Even though I recognize that

out of the schooling system there is more space, I think

that it is necessary to invent ways to work together or to

work inside of the system. It's not easy.

M Y L E S : B-F, "Before Freire," not only did we not get in

203


the universities , but they sometimes kicked anybody

out who supported Highlander. So that's a big politi

cal change. I t's your educational ideas helping in this

country to create space for this kind of work.

At the beginning, back when Highlander started ,

there was a lot of radical ferment . The country was in

a period of flux, and it was a very creative period in

this country, the most creative period I think that I 've

lived through. There were half a dozen experimental

colleges started at that time. There were Bard , Sarah

Lawrence, later Black Mountain , a little later on God

dard. Highlander was started about the same time. And

since we were all experimental and new and had no rec

ognition , we used to have good relationships. Three or

four of those schools would send their staff members to

Highlander for an orientation or would send their stu

dents every year. We had good relationships for the first

several years there, until they got a little bit stuffy and

a little cautious and got more into academics . There

were professors who were supportive of Highlander in

the thirties , and they kept on supporting Highlander.

But they couldn't get the institution to even allow me to

speak there, and they were heads of departments. I 'm

not going to say we didn't have friends. I 'm just saying

institutions, except those early institutions , didn't have

any place for Highlander.

Now I also should say that all along there have been

individuals in universities all over the United States and

Canada with whom we worked comfortably. But I 'm

talking about the fact that I could be invited publ icly

and they 'd announce it. That didn't happen. They used

204


to invite me, and then didn't want anyone to know it till

I got away, and then they denied it after I was there .

In the meantime, we were working with individu

als and helping them kind of subvert the system. We

were always doing that. We were always accused-and

justly, you know-of trying to subvert by working with

people.

Here in the mountains we have had moonshiners

and bootleggers, people who make illegal whiskey and

sell it. They don't pay taxes, and they 're called boot

leggers. They used to put a pint of whiskey in their

boots back in the old days and when they 'd walk up

to somebody who'd buy it , they 'd reach down in their

boot and take it out and sell it to them. So the phrase

I 've always used when I talk is, "You have to bootleg

education." You have to find a way to bootleg it. I t's

illegal, really, because it's not proper, but you do it anyway. We worked with a lot of people who bootlegged

education. That's always been going on. I don't want to

give the impression that we have been isolated or that we

haven't had financial support . We weren't recognized

as "education ."

T H I R D PA RT Y : Well both of you, in both places, were exiled,

right? The difference is that in Latin America they exile

physically by pushing guns. Here in the United States

exile takes another form, freezing ideas out or dosing

you down. The old Highlander, as you know, was not

here in this location . It was seized and destroyed by

the state in 1 959 because of the educational work dur

ing the McCarthy period. So I am struck actually that

what you've been saying is that the system, overall sys-


tern, found a way to exile both forms of education , and

now there seems to be some new space opening up

within both situations. And some recognition ; you've

both received awards. We worry sometimes, are we be

coming too legitimate? Does that mean our ideas, our

work is being co-opted, that it's no longer on the cutting

edge? Does success mean that we're no longer subver

sive enough?

PAU LO: No, no. First of all concerning this question, which is

very important, of co-optation : of course it is impossible

for power to exist without trying to co-opt the other

side, which is not yet powered. Do you see? It takes part

of the struggle. Trying to co-opt is a kind of a struggle

on behalf of those who have power to do so. It's a tac

tic ; it's a moment of the struggle. It's very interesting

because there are people who continue to say that there

should be no struggle; above all, we should get along

together. If we speak about class struggle, then many

people begin to be afraid, but reality is just like this.

Co-optation is a tactical moment of the struggle.

Secondly, in order for you not to be co-opted, at least

for you to be out of the possibility of some power want

ing to co-opt you, it's necessary that you do nothing.

The choice is between doing nothing in order not to be

co-opted, or doing something in order to be an object

of co-optation . I prefer to be an object of co-optation.

Right now what I have to do is to fight to understand

co-optation as a moment of the struggle, and to give my

attention to the attempt by others to co-opt my ideas.

Another thing. Thinking about the history of a soci

ety : not because I am in his house, but I consider Myles's

206


contribution to history as much much bigger. ( I don't

say that I also did not give. I know that I have made

some contribution so it's not false modesty.) Myles be

came himself by struggling and not the opposite. In

some moment of his struggle, some, maybe most , of his

ideas were considered as something absolutely impos

sible to be even thought and then never accepted. He

started, for example, discussing putting into practice

the struggle against racism when it was a kind of cata

clysm, an earthquake. Illegal. In this place here, High

lander, which is also history, he committed disobedi

ence, no?

I did something in Brazil in the fifties and sixties that

also was considered an absurdity: to say that the illiter

ate peasants should have the right to vote. Brazil had

been always governed by intellectuals. But what hap

pens is that historically the change has come, and some

of the change has come precisely because of a struggle

l ike Myles gives here. What he said thirty to forty years

ago could provoke jail, repression, and discrimination.

Today, even though they are not yet accepted totally,

his ideas begin to become obvious. Then this means

that, politically speaking, and historically speaking, the

space begins to become greater. Then we have more

meters and sometimes some kilometers to walk on. This

is the question, because if it was not possible to change

the comprehension of the facts, it would be impossible to

work, and then it is not because we changed. It is not

because we are no longer fighting. This is because our

fight, the fight of many, many, many others, provoked

a legal change.

207


Also the fight of other peoples was seen, for ex

ample, to work in Brazil, in Latin America, in general

before Cuba. The other thing was to work after Cuba.

One thing was to fight before Nicaragua. The other

thing is to fight today. I know I understand for example,

what it means for these fantastic people from Nicaragua

to have done what they did and to continue to do what

they are doing. Nicaragua, to the extent that the people

of Nicaragua got their history into their hands , have

begun to reinvent their society. The people in Nicara

gua are helping us in Brazil, are helping us as Latin

Americans, and are helping you to the extent that you

are also helping them. This is kind of a struggle here ;

on the one hand, you gave support to Nicaragua. On

the other hand, you made an impression in the space

inside of the country, do you see, and this is history.

The cha n ge is inside and outside . You ask whether we

changed a lot, whether or not we have been co-opted .

What happened for me is history also. It does not mean

that we have the right to stop. The people who con

tinued to struggle while I was in exile made it possible

for me to go back to Brazil. Not because I was out of

Brazil ; i t was not my exile that sent me again back to

Brazil . It was the role of those who stayed in Brazil ,

the fighting that brought me and the others into Bra

zil again , but into a different Brazil , historically speak

ing-in spite of the bad circumstances we still have in

Brazil today.

M Y L E S : What opportunities do you have with this acceptance

now to influence the parts of Brazil other than where

you are? I mean what kind of outreach is possible now?

208


PAU L O : I don't want to emphasize the importance of my

work. I have recognized the work of many other Bra

zilian educators who differ from me. But I can tell you

that more and more, in different parts of B razil , the

people are working and recreating me and reinventing

me, adapting to the new circumstances of the country

and putting into practice some of the ideas I have de

fended until today. Recently, for example, I spent four

days in Recife. I was working three days with a team of

educators. Television and newspaper reporters asked

me, in interview, about how I was experiencing that

moment, because I was expelled from the state and now

the government is the same government that was ex

pelled in 1 964. The governor was reelected. Of course

I said it is a reason for me to be happy, to feel well , not

to feel proud, but happy. I see many many places in

Brazil today, in the north of the country, the south of the country, where there are many many kinds of work

with my ideas . I am allowed in the country. It is good.

M Y L E S : Now how much of a turnover has there been from

the early days , through the base community groups? I

know that when I was down about ten years ago in Rio

and Sao Paulo and Recife, there was a lot of activity,

especially among a lot of priests and bishops. I met Dom

Cammera [the Cardinal of Sao Paulo] and Cardinal

Arness [the retired Archbishop of Olinda and Recife] .

Through them I met some of the priests who were out

in the rural areas, where officials tried to close their

churches. I remember I went to one Catholic church not

so far from a l i ttle town right outside of Rio. The church

was full of flowers almost up to the altar, so I asked

209


the priest where the people sat to come to be blessed,

and he said : "Oh, they don't come here anymore. This

church is for weddings and things like that ; we don't

use it for worship." I said, "Is this your church?" He

said , "No, my church is out in these communities , that's

where the church is now." He was using his church for

a storehouse. Now most people-people l ike that who

are out working these base community groups or work

ing with the unions at a time when it was illegal for

the unions to have meetings and to have strikes-they

were obviously either influenced directly or indirectly

by some of the things you'd done there and in Chile. I

don't know how much there was of that, but there was

some, and I've been told there's been quite a carryover

of the ideas, of course adapted, reinterpreted, as they

should be, but still some of the ideas there. Did you

have any sense when you went back that this had taken

place and was still a factor in their thinking?

PAU LO: Yes.

M Y L E S : When you left, you left something behind-that's

what I'm trying to say.

PAU LO: Yes, yes, of course, and when I went back to Bra

zil, I could perceive some very interesting and strong

historical changes in Brazil, some novel changes-for

example, the Christian base communities. Historically

from the Christian point of view, it is very old, but his

torically from the political point of view, it was very novel

in Brazil. One of the new things I found is that the

Christian people come to the churches in order to know

better about their situation in relation to their faith. It

2 1 0


was very interesting to see how the people, the Chris

tian peasants and workers, did not forget. Where some

times they stop and only l isten to the priests reading

the Gospels, they began to read the Gospels themselves

and then began something like the circles you have in

Scandinavia.

MYLES: Study circles.

PAULO: Study circles. They began also to have their study

circles, studying, discussing the Gospels, and think

ing about the political and social circumstances in

which they were reinterpreting the Gospels . In doing

that, they discovered the need to change the country,

and they got a new consciousness-a historical, politi

cal consciousness of the reality. At the same time they

taught the priests how to rethink the whole thing of

politics and social movements and so on. Inside of this

movement, some priests and some educators had read

my writings . For example, I know that when it was not

possible in Brazil to publish Pedagogy of the Oppressed,

many people read the Italian edition, the French edi

tion , the Spanish edition . Those editions multiplied in

copies, and it started the book underground. Generally

one of the great problems exiled people have is that

they don't want to die, politically speaking. I never died

because I was not exclusively a poli tician. I was mainly

an educator who was a politician. I never died ; I always

was alive in Brazil, because of the books and articles and

so on. It would be a mistake and show a lack of humility

if I said that I was instrumental in the development of

the base communities . No, I was not. But I also cannot

2 1 1


say that I did not have any kind of influence. No, I had

a good influence, but within the limits in which I could

be influential . Yes .

M Y L E S : I was interested in the unions when I visited Brazil

earlier. Of course the unions couldn't meet unless it

was an official meeting, which meant that the unions

were organized in a kind of a syndicalism. All the steel

workers in the whole area were in one local union , ten

to twelve thousand, and they only had four or five shop

stewards. There might be twenty plants, so most of the

plants didn't even have any representation . But there

was a kind of unofficial movment outside the official

unions. There were the people the priests were working

with , and in fact a lot of their plans, their protests and

even strikes were planned in these base communities .

They 'd pray a while and read a little scripture and then

get down to business.

PAU LO: Look, I think that the political consciousness of the

working class in Brazil today has gained clarity ; it is

very interesting how many dimensions of the working

class are perceiving the political and the social process.

I don't want to say that we already have very good par

ticipation from the point of view of mobilization, of

organization, but maybe I can say without risking a mis

take that, above all, in urban centers l ike Sao Paulo, we

have a great part of the working class in the unions,

for example, movements grasping fundamental aspects

of history. For example , I think that in the process of

struggle we spoke about before-not necessarily with

guns, but the struggle because of differences in the

antagonist's interests-there is a qual itative difference

2 1 2


when the leaders of the working class discover some

thing that is very obvious, that is, that the education that

the dominant classes offer to the working class neces

sarily is the education that reproduces the working class

as such . Look, I don't want to say that every time the edu

cation that the ruling class offers to the working class

reproduces the working class as such . Maybe sometimes

education does not get this result, but the ideological in

tention of the ruling class could not be another one. If

it was another one, we could no longer understand the

contradictions in social life . But for me, this moment of

new understanding is a very important moment in the

struggle of the working class .

Right now, it's very good for me to tell you that in

about 1 986 I was elected president of the council of

the Institute of Cajamar. Cajamar is the name of the

region . Some groups of workers there got a building

that used to be a great motel on the road to Campi

nas. In this wonderful building they created an institute

for formation or training of the working class, peasants

and the urban workers under their responsibil ity. They

had the help of some intel lectuals whose political choice

coincides with their choice, also intellectuals who don't

think that they possess the truths to give to the workers.

Intellectuals who respect the workers' process of know

ing and who want to grow up with the workers . I am the

president of this institution today. Next year I hope to

be able to give much more presence to the work and to

make a bigger contribution . They are offering weekend

seminars to the working class. People who come to the

institute can live inside of the house. I t's a big building,

2 1 3


1 20 or so rooms, and there is a kitchen, and they have

entertainment. There are teachers who come from the

working class and there are teachers from the univer

sity, and they organize programs about the history of

the country, the history of the working class in Brazil ,

of the struggle of the working class, how to understand

critically history in Brazil .

So this institute is making a very important contribu

tion to the working class movement and to the struggle

of the people. It is a kind of a seed for a popular uni

versity. That is, it is not a question of transforming this

institute into a university less efficient than universities

we already have. No, it is not the question to copy the

model of the university, the formalism of the university,

but this is precisely what I said in the beginning of our

conversation. It is a center that wants to be a theoretical

context inside of which the workers can make a critical

reflection about what they do outside of the theoretical

context . That is what they are doing in the concrete

context or even inside of the union context. That is,

they get distance, inside of the theoretical context, from

the struggle outside in order to understand it better,

to understand the reason for the struggle and to make

better methods for this struggle, and how to choose.

I t is this need of transforming society and how to do

that. It means to be patient, or the words I prefer, to

be impatiently patient, in the process of struggling to

change.


"The people begin to get their history into their hands, and

then the role of education changes"

PAU LO: Today, I think, Myles, there is another perception

that comes up in the process of struggle, which is the

perception of the right that the workers have to express

their suffering. I don't know. Maybe some reader of this

book that we are speaking today will say : "But Paulo,

it does not make sense. It is nothing, the right of ex

pressing pain." Yes , I think that it is a fantastic right.

Do you see? Not just individually but socially. We have

the right to say that we are suffering; we have the right

to express our pain. When Elza died, I had the right

to stay at home, suffering. The university understood

that I could not go there to give a seminar. But I asked

myself during those so difficult days for me, how many

workers could cry about their loss? How many workers

could choose to do as I when I dealt with my loss , with the

loss of Elza, with my sorrow? Then it is a fundamental

right . Of course, first of all we have to get the right of

eating. Of course, we have to get the right of sleeping,

of l iving in a house, and we are very far away from that

still in Brazil. But we have to get more and more space

for rights like this . We have to have the right of com

manding our education, the education we need, and

also we have to get the right to express our suffering

because, look, the workers suffer. You can define the

life of the workers, of the popular people, as a struggle.

They struggle to survive. And in some moment , then,

you get the need to express this right, to live this right.

We are not yet at this level, but at least the workers are

2 1 5

Education and SociaL Change

beginning to struggle, to fight in order to get their edu

cation or part of it into their hands. This is for me a

very new moment in Brazilian political history. It has

to do also with the creation in Brazil of a workers party

with leadership of workers , with the presence of many

intellectuals . I hope that many of us are learning how

difficult it is to make history, and how important it is

to learn that we are being made by the history we make

in the social process inside of history. Fortunately I am

not naively optimistic , idealistic, but I am critically opti

mistic , with the process of learning that a great part of

the working class demonstrates today in Brazil.

We are in the sight of a process. I always say that

the deepened transformation in society never arrived

on a second Monday morning. Never. No, the radical

transformation of society is a process, really, and it comes

l ike this.

M Y L E S : I 've often said that if we could do something over

night , it's not worth doing because if it's that simple and

that easy, it'll take care of itself. There'll be plenty of

people who will see that it happens. Tough problems

take time and you have to struggle with them.

T H I R D PART Y : I s this struggle to put education in the hands

of the people? Is that what's perhaps most significant

about Nicaragua in your context , Paulo? Myles has also

visited Nicaragua.

PAU LO: Yes. I would say something about that , and after

wards I would like very much to hear Myles speaking

about Nicaragua and what he can do as challenger of

other people. I t's very, very interesting. It has to do with

something that I said before. The revolution in Nicara-


gua did not happen like this, in an instance. That is, the

leader was killed in 1 934, and the revolution got power

in 1 979, and it continues. But what is interesting to see

is how things changed in the country. How the nature

of the process began to change, to get a new face, a new

quality. Of course, precisely because the event is a his

torical phenomenon, it cannot be explained mechanis

tically. If we could change a society like we can change

the position of the furniture of this house, it would be

fantastic. It would be just a question of muscular power,

no? That is , I can take this chair and put it over there .

We could change everything here in ten minutes. H is

tory is not like this. It takes time in history to make

history. You cannot make it today, but the change comes

up in all directions and dimensions of the life of soci

ety. Nevertheless it is easier in some corners of society'S

historical streets. It's less easy in other corners . The cor

ner of education is not so easy to change because there

is strong and heavy ideological material that has been

transmitted , even to the revolutionaries. For example ,

there is a certain authoritarian traditionalism or tra

ditional total itarianism that was very alive many years

before, centuries before the revolution, which had false

conviviality inside of the very revolutionaries . There is

sometimes a certain contradiction between the speech

of a revolutionary and his or her practice. As an edu

cator, for example, he or she is much more traditional

and fears the students' possibilities more than he or

she should . They could believe much more in the abili

ties of the students , of the people, but they are afraid

of freedom. They are conditioned by a very old fear,

2 1 7


which is the fear of freedom. It happens, and you can

not change by decree one of the obstacles for the creation

of the new education, which is precisely the presence,

the alive presence, of all this kind of ideology.

It is a time of confrontation , this transition, the time

of transition of the old society to a new one that does not

exist yet , but it's being created with the confrontation

of the ghosts. There are many ghosts in society fighting

against the dream of a much more open society. Gener

ally revolutions have this in common. We cannot decide

this period cannot exist. We have to understand that

it exists historically, culturally, socially. We must fight

also. The struggle does not stop when the revolution is

in power. I t starts a new kind of struggle, new kind of

fighting that all societies knew and are knowing. Then

the role of education changes also in this new period.

But what I want to say is that with the greater dif

ficulties in education's corner of history, society never

theless begins to change qualitatively and the people

begin to experience that the time now is different from

the other time. Then the people begin to know that

there is a new space created by the social work, social

transformations that society is experiencing, is living.

It means what I said before. The people begin to get

their history into their hands, and then the role of

education changes . Before they got in power, educa

tion was the official education ; the schooling system was

an attempt to reproduce the dominant ideology of the

ruling class . The revolutionary groups , the progressive

groups, worked in education in order to demystify the

official role of education. Now the question is not for

2 18


the new education to become a kind of indoctrination,

it is as political as the other one was political , but now

with another direction with another dream. That is, the

emphasis now, in the process of transition of revolution,

is to create an education that enlarges and amplifies the

horizon of critical understanding of the people, to cre

ate an education devoted to freedom. I am sure that

this is the opinion and the position and the struggle of

Fernando Cardenal as minister of education in Nica

ragua. I am sure that Fernando has to be patient also

with some resistance from the right and from the left .

I am not saying that he must be in the center-no, he

must be a left man, but with this kind of ideological re

sistance . I think that this is one of the imperatives with

which Nicaragua lives now, demanding a very open and

creative education, working to increase certainty about

the role of the people in the process of creating, of

transforming power and of knowing their society, their

reality, in order to participate as never the people have

participated before.

M Y LE S : How much has the schooling system-not popular

education, but the schools themselves-changed?

PAU LO : It is not easy to change. I am sure that if you ask this

question to Fernando he will tell you seriously things

like I heard from President Nyerere, for example, in

the seventies in Tanzania. When I talked with the presi

dent , he used to say to me, "Paulo, it's not easy to put

into practice the things we think about." Yes, it is not

easy, but it's not impossible . This is my conviction .

The question for Nicaragua as well as for Cuba is

how to deal with this resistance the day after the revo-

2 1 9


lution got power. If it was mechanistic , it should be very

easy, but it is not . For example, one of the fears we have

here as educators is the fear of experiencing new things,

of exposing ourselves to mistakes . In the last analysis

we have real freedom. We are afraid of risking. And

it's impossible, just impossible, to create without risk

ing. It's absolutely impossible, but it takes time to begin

to risk. We must be free ; we must be free to believe in

freedom. Do you see this paradox? Without freedom

it's difficult to understand freedom. On the other hand,

we fight for freedom to the extent that we don't have

freedom, but in fighting for freedom we discover how

freedom is beautiful and difficult to be created, but we

have to believe that it's possible.

I don't accept that the school in itself is bad. We

need to go beyond a metaphysical understanding of

the school. For me the school is a social and historical

institution, and in being a social and historical institu

tion, the school can be changed. But the school can be

changed not exclusively by a decree, but by a new gen

eration of teachers, of educators who must be prepared,

trained, formed.

I don't l ike the word training in English . Maybe it's

a prejudice of mine, but I prefer formation, formation in

French and fOT1Tta(iiO in Portuguese. One of the most

important tasks I think for a revolutionary government

or a progressive government-because I don't want to

leave out of this reflection the people who did not have

a revolution, l ike my people-for educators and poli

ticians, is to think seriously about the formation of the

2 20


educators. But understanding formation not as some

thing that we do in some weekends or some semesters,

but formation as a permanent process , and formation

as being an exercise, a critical understanding of what

we do. That is, getting the practice we have, the experi

ence we have, and then reflecting on the experience and

the practice in order to understand theoretically what

it means. We should form groups or teams of super

visors to follow very near as friends and as people who

must know more than the teachers in order to challenge

the teachers about what they are doing. Then, through

this kind of very strong serious work, through a work

that is at the same time tender and heavy and serious

and rigorous, we need to shape, to reshape, to form

permanently the teachers without manipulating them.

M Y L E S : But it's quite obvious that a revolution to my knowl

edge has not changed any schooling system or any that

I 've ever known about. School systems stay pretty much

like they were before .

PAU LO: Yes.

M Y L E S : I t happened in Cuba, happened in Nicaragua.

PAULO: But, Myles, I was in Cuba in June, and I spent four

hours one morning with the national team that is in

charge of transforming the schooling system, and I

liked very much the issues we discussed. I also met a

physicist, a very good scientist , who told me that the

minister of education invited some scientists to discuss

education in Cuba. And the minister asked the scientists

two questions. The first, what seemed to the scientists

to be wrong in the educational system ? And, second,

2 2 1


what would they suggest? They said the worst thing in

the system is some traditional totalitarianism-this is

the thing we were talking about-and the best thing to

do should be, through teaching the contents, to chal

lenge the students to think critically. Do you see? Could

you have another better answer? No. It is just that , but

it is also history. Maybe if those questions had been

asked ten years ago, another scientist would not have

answered l ike this.

M Y L E S : I don't mean to say that they aren't changing. I

meant that the revolution didn't automatically change

the schooling system in any country that I know of. It

opened up the possibility of change, but it didn't just

change it like it changed some other things. I t changed

the land ownership, changed voting, changed a lot of

things as a direct result of the revolution. Schools don't

change automatically in any place I know of.

PAU LO: It's another example of how the transformation of

society, in being historical , is not mechanistic. I t's not

a question just of wanting to do differently. Of course,

it implies a political decision, but it implies also a very

clear ability to use time to make change. Do you see?

Things can be taught inside of history, not before time,

but in time, on time. There is time for all these things.

M Y L E S : Since the revolution doesn't change the schooling

system, how do you go about changing? What has been

done to change it? That process is very important be

cause if schools can't change when you have a revolution

or don't change, then it's going to slow down the frui

tion of the revolution . It's terribly important, and it's

2 2 2


no answer to say in Nicaragua we've got a popular edu

cation movement, because the parents still send their

kids to the same schools. It's still the place that's part of

the old structure.

I know that if we're going to move in the direction

of radical social change, we've got to take a further step

than we're talking about here. I could illustrate what

I 'm talking about by an experience I had when I was

invited to be one of the official election observers in

Nicaragua. They invited people from all over the world

to be there to observe the election. They wanted people

to see for themselves. We had a l ittle badge that meant

we could go in any polling place in Nicaragua before

they opened the office to see that there's no stuffed bal

lot boxes. We could help count the ballots . We could

be there when people were voting. I did some of all

those things. But I wanted to do more than just observe

the election, because I knew the election was going to

be an honest election, and I was glad to be a witness

to the fact. I asked to be allowed to join the Witnesses

for Peace up on the border between Sandino and the

Honduran border. I spent that day within sight of Hon

duras in little farm communities , little school houses

where the voting was going on. In fact, we were in such

an isolated part of the country that they hadn't gotten

around to delivering the ballots . We took the ballots

into the places so they could vote. We went in a four

wheel Jeep, and then we walked. The whole business

had been wiped out by the contras, but in that area

popular education was going on, under the gun, right

2 2 3

Education and SociaL Change

there within sight. I kept looking up in the mountains ,

because if you were on top of those mountains, that was

in Honduras.

In that situation I met three or four popular educa

tors . Two days before , they had found this popular edu

cator who lived nearby with his throat cut, which was

what the contras did to popular educators to let people

know that they knew they were popular educators . (Not

so incidentally the CIA claimed to be the policymaker

for the contras .) As I looked at that man's grave, that

simple grave where his neighbors had buried him with

a little wooden cross on top, I was filled with tears and

filled with anger, knowing that our government was

really responsible for that man's death . But the fact that

there were people even within sight of that house who

were continuing to do popular education meant that

they had moved way beyond what we've talked about

up to now, in terms of being effective and reaching the

people. They had committed their lives to it.

And you know I'm raising the question, can we move

in this country? Can the people in Appalachia who are

so impressed with popular education and what's going

on in Nicaragua, can we move another stage beyond

just thinking it's a wonderful idea and be willing to

make sacrifices? Now I 'm not saying that that's some

thing that's going to happen tomorrow or should hap

pen tomorrow, because there's no basis for it , but if

we moved in that direction , if we would move to the

place where we are willing to enter acts of civil disobe

dience . . . Many people in this region have already

signed a pledge saying that they would be able to take

2 2 4


part in acts of civil disobedience and go to jail for this.

So we're moving in the direction, but I think we have to

really add another dimension to what we've been talk

ing about , and that's the courage of these people who

are continuing to do this popular education there de

spite what we are doing to them. That's a dimension

that I don't think we've gotten into here in Appalachia

or at Highlander, but one we must get into if we're

going to move toward any kind of transformation of

society. That's another lesson I 'd like us to learn from

the Nicaraguan popular educators .

I don't have any fear that it won't take place. I 've

seen it in the civil rights movement. The people I was

involved with in the civil rights movement who were

willing to die for what they believed in I had known five

years before, and they were frivolous, actually frivolous.

A movement can change people. So I'm not hopeless .

I 'm just saying I think we have to realize that we have to

be prepared to help people move to that stage when the

time comes, and I think people will move . I don't think

there's any question. They 've done it in the struggles in

the coal fields and the union. There's no question about

people being willing to do it. That's a side of popular

education that we very seldom hear people talk about ,

but I wanted to be sure that we understood that that's

the price some of those people have to pay and are

paying.

PAU LO: It is a very serious point and I think that we would

have the risk here in this conversation to be consid

ered as maybe two old men full of illusions and hopes,

when we say things like this. But it is important to call

2 2 5


to the attention of the young people that being a pro

gressive on one hand does not mean to be naive, but to

make some decisions and then to risk the preservation

of the revolution. On the other hand, being a progres

sive means to deepen the connection with the masses

of people , means to respect the beliefs of the people,

means to consult the people, means to start from the

letters and words with which the people are starting the

process of education. All these things are like recogniz

ing what levels of knowledge people have, in order to

create a new knowledge and to help thf' people to know

better what they already know. I t's not an idealism; it is

consistency. I t's a revolutionary process.

M Y LE S : This is heavy listening.

C H A P T E R 6

Reflections

"Peaks and valleys and hills and hollers"

PAU L O : And now, Myles , I would l ike to ask you a very per

sonal question. What were the first reasons that brought

you into the roads of this kind of struggle, believing in

human beings of all races? You are a beautiful white

man with blue eyes and tall , and you had every rea

son not to do what you did, from the point of view

of the world . What were some of the reasons? Maybe

a strong desire of love? Maybe some religious beliefs ?

Maybe some political clarities, philosophical ideas? Say

something about this.

M Y L E S : Well, I really don't know the answer.

PAU LO : Sometimes I ask myself, and I also don't know.

M Y L E S : I could think of some periods that stand out in re-

energizing me or sending me off at a different angle.

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Reflections

I don't think any two or three of them would explain

completely.

Somehow I think it was a combination of my par

ents' interest in education and their nonoppressive reli

gious beliefs . They weren't "churchy" kind of people,

although they went to church-I think as much for

social reasons as any other reasons, because there wasn't

anything else to do in a little town except go to church

and go to school, or for the men to sit around the bar

ber shop and talk. But there were values involved, edu

cational values, ethical values, religious values, social

values-not explicit, but there. And I think poverty

and having to work can have a good effect or a bad

effect . To some people it dries them up and makes them

feel that there's no hope. (Hopeless people make good

fascists .) But for some reason I was educated positively

by that experience . Before I was in high school, I was

aware that while we didn't feel poor in spirit , we were

deprived. We didn't have money to buy books, and my

brother and I-Delmas, my brother who's dead now

both l iked to read . We found out that you could order

books five books for a dollar from Sears and Roebuck

catalog, and if they didn't have the books you ordered,

they 'd send you other books. If you didn't like the books

they sent you, send them back and they would send

you some more books. So we never liked any book they

sent us! We used one dollar for two years. Just kept

sending them back. We didn't care what they sent us,

and we figured out that they were such a big outfit that

they 'd never check. They finally found out and said

Reflections

there weren't any more for our dollar. But they gave us

the books.

But no, we were deprived except where we could

find some way to gnaw off the arm of the system a

little bit . That deprivation was not so much a depri

vation of spirit as much as not having a proper diet,

not being able to buy books or have the clothes to go

to social affairs. So we had to live within ourselves,

which was not a bad thing. My sympathies have always

been directed outward . I can remember very well dur

ing college, when I was working in the mountains, in

the Cumberland Mountains about eighty miles from

here, there was a train that ran through the mountains ,

through gorges and mountain sides and down streams .

A beautiful trip. Every time I had a chance, I would li.ke

to take that trip in the train. I would stand in between

the cars and open the door so I could see out, get the

breeze, and watch the mountains go by. I used to play

a game. I was a giant running on the mountains, and

I had to look where I put my foot because I 'd come

up with this peak, and I 'd have to stand on the side of

the next mountain . It was kind of a game of running

along with the train over the mountains. I was playing

that game one time, and suddenly I realized that there

was a house right there. I lost interest in my little game

and started looking at that house right near the tracks.

As we got closer I saw a I 5-year-old girl standing on

the porch, hanging by one arm around the pillar that

held up the porch, hanging there looking at that train

with the most forlorn look I think I have ever seen .

2 2 9

Reflections

Such a sad look. I just said to myself, she sees this train

going by, and to her it represents getting away from

that poverty that's drying her up. No hope . Nothing. No

future . This train could take her away but she doesn't

have the money to get on this train, or she wouldn't

know where to go if she got on it. I started crying right

there because it was such a sad picture of hopelessness.

That picture stayed in my mind and is still in mind,

and I still cry when I think about it. That helped me

understand the cruelty of the system that bl ighted what

could've been a beautiful life . That helped, in a way,

my determination to try to do something about that

situation .

But when I told that story to a friend of mine, he

said : "Well now, you helped one young woman and

another young man you found in the mountains go to

school . Why don't you go back and find that girl and

get her in schoo!." I said : "No. She represents some

thing else to me. She represents all the people in the

mountains and to get her into school wouldn't solve the

problem that she raises in my mind . It isn't an indi

vidual solution . There's no individual solution to her

problem. There's many other people I could've seen,

just l ike her. Until I can start thinking in terms of how

you deal with more than one person at a time on an

individual basis , then I 'm not responding to the feeling

I had." You know, that kind of experience was impor

tant.

Another experience that was very important to me,

that moved me along in my thinking, happened at Cum-

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berland College, where I was a student, in Lebanon,

Tennessee. The head of the local woolen mill was a

very reactionary manufacturer, so reactionary that he

started a southern manufacturer 's organization because

he felt the national manufacturer 's association was com

munistic. This is a matter of record. I invited him later

on to come to Highlander and meet with a labor orga

nizer and have a debate about unions, and he wrote to

his constituents in his organization that the Highlander

Folk School is the greatest insult ever known to Anglo

Saxon purity. But it was this man , the president of the

woolen mill and a board member of Cumberland Col

lege, who was invited to give a Labor Day speech at the

university, that was in about 1 926 or 1 92 7 . He said these

northern agitators are coming down here trying to stir

up the people and start unions, and we've got to keep

them out of here. He says they 're going to destroy the

South . They 're going to destroy industry, destroy jobs

for people . And he says God has given us the responsi

bility as owners of factories to provide jobs for people,

and it's up to us to decide what those jobs are, how long

people work, and what they get paid. Well , having come

from a working-class background, I almost wanted to

pull him off the platform and beat him up! It was such

an insulting thing to say.

That had a very good influence on me; it really af

fected me in terms of my thinking about the economic

system. I could go on and on thinking of experiences

that continued to move me in a certain direction. I had

this sense that it wasn't mean individuals who caused

Reflections

poverty or injustice; I just didn't have it in any kind of

context. I didn't know any sociology. I knew nothing

about Marx. I had no way of analyzing. Even after I was

out of college, the year after I graduated, I stayed and

worked in the mountains. I was still struggling with this

problem of social as against individual problems and

individual versus social morality, how values could be

made part of the system and how they were always re

jected by the system like they were a bad disease. When

I discovered the Marxist way of analyzing, a sociological

way of looking at things, that gave me some categories

for thinking. Before, I didn't have any kind of frame

work. I had the right sensitivity but I didn't have any

way of naming anything. That's when I found that it

was absolutely necessary to understand the nature of

society. If I was going to change it, going to try to do

anything about it , I had to understand it . That was the

beginning of a whole new insight .

Prior to that time, I had an idea that I would get a job

teaching in a mountain college site. I was offered sev

eral jobs by colleges even before I graduated, because I

had been working in the mountains. I was just assuming

that there were ways I could work within the system.

I found out that all these schools, without exception ,

never took the student into consideration. They always

had a canned program they'd open up and dump on

people. This could be religious or it could be vocational ,

'but it was fitting the people into the colleges' conception

inste�d of education related to the people themselves.

None of them dealt with economic and social issues.

Reflections

They could have been in Long Island or they could have

been in Timbuktu . That's when I said I'm not going to

try to fit into this situation ; I'm going to try to figure

out some better way of doing it.

All these contradictions that I saw had to be re

solved. I think more important than how I went about

resolving them is the feeling that had become a part of

me, the feeling that I had to do something about injus

tice and it had to be done not on an individual basis.

This feeling became so much a part of me that I never

even thought about it anymore. Because of that little

experience in the clover patch when I was growing up,

I wasn't so much personally involved in thinking of my

self. I was beginning to get my personal satisfactions out

of dealing some way with this economic-political situa

tion. To me that was where I got my joy, where I got

my excitement, where I felt recompensed. So I wasn't

starving myself at all. I was feeding myself all that time.

My personal interests were well served ; Myles Horton

was never neglected in this process . Never, never. I

was always terribly excited and invigorated by learning

things. Sometimes I 'd learn something and I couldn't

sleep at night, I was so excited about what I'd learned.

That to me was plenty of joy, plenty of feeling of accom

plishment. People asked me why didn't I ever attempt

to make it in the system, to get recognition, and my

answer has always been that I did but it's in my system,

not the system they 're talking about. I 've got my own

system I had to get credit for. I always said I'd nev�r

compete with anybody but Myles Horton. All the needs

2 3 3

Reflections

that were ever very important to me, I could satisfy

within my way of living and doing things, so I 've never

felt that I made any sacrifices.

Now it would be a great sacrifice for me if I had to

yield to the system. That would be a sacrifice, not doing

what I'm doing. I 've had too much pleasure, too much

fun doing what I have done to be given credit for it.

You know, Paulo says all these complimentary things

about me, and I'm glad he feels that way because I 'm

glad he values what I do, but I know that as insightful

and as caring as Paulo is, that it isn't Paulo, but history

that's going to make a decision as to whether I've done

anything worthwhile.

PAU L O : I think that I understand that . In the last analysis ,

you are a man who experiences simultaneously peace

because of what you have done and the opposite of

being in peace. Anxious, no? See , you experienced

simultaneously peace and then anxiety.

M Y L E S : Don't you?

PAU LO : Yes.

M Y L E S : Of course you do.

PAU L O : Because on one hand you are more or less sure that

you did the best.

M Y L E S : I'm on the right track. I'm sure I'm on the right

track. I haven't gotten too far but I'm on the right track.

PAU LO : On the other hand, you know that it's possible to

do more. You cannot accept being immobilized because

you think that you've finished. You experience the very

nature of being a human being-that is, unfinished ,

constantly in search.

M Y L E S : When you're finished you're dead .

2 34

Reflections

PAU L O : Yes. And perhaps you do not finish . Nevertheless

you remain in the thoughts of those who discuss you

and your work. Today you talked a lot about the past,

about people who are no longer here , but you are here.

M Y L E S : Let me just say one more thing. I don't have any

hesitancy in using everything I can learn from you,

and I have the responsibility to learn everything I can

from you. Now I try to give recognition not because

I think that I am obligated to, but because I want

people to identify the source of this information for

their own sake , so they can profit by that storehouse

of knowledge. But I feel that all knowledge should

be in the free-trade zone. Your knowledge, my knowl

edge, everybody's knowledge should be made use of. I

think people who refuse to use other people's knowl

edge are making a big mistake. Those who refuse to

share their knowledge with other people are making a

great mistake, because we need it all . I don't have any

problem about ideas I got from other people . If I find

them useful, I'll just ease them right in and make them

my own.

PAU LO : Myles, I think it i s so beautiful, your life and the life

of this institution, because we see the cycles of work.

In the thirties , the commitment was to the problems of

unions, which was also education and politics. After

ward we see as a continuation of that a new source,

which is the question of literacy, the question of literacy

associated to the restrictions of racism. This brought

you and the institution years later to the civil rights

struggle. All these different moments indicate that you

have been always going around the problem of dig-

2 35

Reflections

nity of human beings-the question of freedom, the

dreams of the people, the respect for the people, in

which education for you is shaped. For you there is

no education out of that . You recognize that there are

many other people who tried precisely using education

to work against dignity, but it's not for you or for us.

Now I think that it would be interesting to listen to

you talk a little bit about the cycles, which constitute the

road of Highlander Center, telling us some thing about

the thirties, the fifties, and today.

M Y L E S : Well, this is one way I have talked about it: High

lander's always been in the mountainous part of the

United States, and our history at Highlander has been

an up and down history, peaks and valleys and hills and

hollers. The history of Highlander is the same as the

history of the South. Our history is a reflection of what

goes on in the South in the sense that Highlander's

been involved in the things of significance that hap

pened in the South. When there's nothing happening,

then Highlander was not doing any movement-type ac

tivities because there was no movement. We followed

pretty closely what's happened to the people.

But if we only followed that, we would have no edu

cational role. We've always tried to find little pockets of

progressivism, little pockets of radicalism, something

that was a little different than just survival . In so doing,

when a situation started forming, Highlander was in

side that movement, not waiting for it to happen and

then trying to be a part of it. For example, during

the civil rights period, through the Citizenship Schools,

workshops, and the fact that Highlander was an inte-

Reflections

grated place, many who became leaders of the civil

rights movement had been at Highlander, and High

lander was accepted as a part of it. We were not some

thing outside asking what can we do to help or can we

get on the band wagon. It was just taken for granted

that activists could count on Highlander and make use

of Highlander. Same thing happened in the early days

of the industrial union movement.

So the valley periods can be used just to kill time

and survive, or they can be used to lay the groundwork

of being inside when a movement occurs. That's what

makes it possible for us to have peak periods. I remem

ber so well so many people, educators, people of good

will during the civil rights period who rushed in after

the band wagon started and climbed up on top of the

band wagon and were part of the movement. But the

movement was being run by the people inside and they

couldn't get inside because people didn't know them in

side, and they didn't have time then to get acquainted

and to build trust. It was too late . In a crisis situation,

you only deal with the people you can trust.

When you're trying to build for the future, that's the

creative period. I always have valued those low periods

when you had to really struggle intellectually to try to

get the sense of what was going on, so you could find

little pockets to work in. That's the only way you'll ever

be part of the struggle, when you climb the hill out of

the valley. So Highlander, seems to me, has been a part

of the people's lives whether they're in the valley or on

the hill. During the low periods-what I call the orga

nizational periods, the individualistic periods, not the

2 37

Reflections

movement periods-the people, not only us but every

body, are longing for something better. Trying to get

a hold of something, trying to make something. Today

I was glad you had those presentations of the activities

that are being done here , because to my mind some of

those activities may well have the seeds of moving from

services and limited reforms to structural reforms. The

reason I say some of them may have that seed is because

there's enough anger in some of them; there's enough

understanding that the system isn't ever going to serve

their purpose; that they may develop into some pro

grams for structural changes, conscious of the fact that

they 're against the system and they 're trying to change

the system. Being in a valley period , an organizational

period, doesn't mean Highlander has any less impor

tant role. It means it's a different role, a harder role.

Highlander's history has been up and down but not

important and unimportant. We would never have the

importance, the recognition that we have gotten if we

hadn't done these jobs in the valleys. It's always been

an identification with the people. When the people are

high, we are high, hopefully a little above them. When

they 're low, we're down low, but hopefully we're a little

above them. Low periods are a good time to work out

the techniques and ways of involving people, ways of

having people begin to use critical judgments . In a

movement period, it's too late after you get going to

stop and do these things. People are too busy doing

something else .

I'm much betler at working out ideas in action than

I am in theorizing about it and then transferring my

Reflections

thinking to action. I don't work that way. I work with

tentative ideas and I experiment and then with that

experimentation in action , I finally come to the conclu

sions about what I think is the right way to do it. This is

an effort to express what I learned by the way I have of

learning-that's in action, testing out ideas, seeing what

works, seeing what doesn't. And, of course, all along

there's always a theory for everything, before you act

you know there's a connection . But those are little theo

ries that finally build up to a bigger theory. I can say

that theory didn't come out of my head. That came out

of action. That came out of interaction, theory, prac

tice , reflection, which you describe so well . That's the

result and not the cause. And it's still subject to constant

change. As action , I'm enlightened by the things I learn

working with people in action.

"It's necessary to laugh with the people"

M Y L E S : Paulo, as I understood your question to me, it was

in many ways, "How did you become Myles Horton?"

Would you like to respond and talk about some of the

ways that you became Paulo Freire and all the many

ways that you've reinvented your life out of your ex

periences?

PAU L O : You started by saying that it was not easy. I also say

that it's not easy for me, but I can try to say something

about that . As in your case, I also learned a lot from

difficulties. In my childhood I had some problems con

cerning nut eating enough, and my family suffered

not too much but suffered-from the Depression of

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Reflections

1 929. As a child I had some problems understanding

what I was studying at the primary school. All these

things helped me. You are right when you say some

times a situation like this provokes bad reactions, some

times good reactions; sometimes they help, sometimes

they don't help. In my case I feel that I was helped.

It was very interesting for me to understand what it

meant to be hungry. I say that we know what it means

to be hungry when we don't have the possibility to eat,

when we don't see how to solve the challenge of being

hungry. For example, I don't know what it means to be

hungry if I am hungry just because I am on a diet to get

a beautiful shape. It does not mean that I know what

it means to be hungry because I can eat. It's a ques

tion of wanting to eat. We know what it means to be

hungry when we don't know how to solve the problem,

and I had that . I had this experience, and it helped

me a lot . When I was 1 2 years old, I l ived out of Re

cife. I shared my days with boys belonging to my social

class and also with working-class boys. In some way I

had the experience of mediating them, as I had been

born to a middle-class family. From the point of view

of being hungry, I was next to the working-class boys,

and I could understand well the two situations. Since

that time, even though I could not understand the real

reasons, I began to think that something was wrong.

Maybe I can vocalize the beginnings of my commitment

as an educator fighting against injustice. Maybe I can

locate these beginnings in my childhood because it was

there that I started learning that it was important to

Reflections

fight against this. I did not know yet how to fight as well

as I do today-though I don't know too much today !

but I began to be open to this kind of learning when I

was a child. I am sure of that.

There is another point, I think, that is important for

me when I try to understand myself and my way of act

ing, of fighting. Side by side with the experience of my

childhood, like in the case of Myles, is the experience

of my · parents. That is, how they loved themselves and

how they gave us, the sons, the example of loving, and

how they loved us. When I remember my childhood, in

spite of the difficulties we had to eat well, to dress well ,

to study; I felt emotionally entire . [ had emotional equi

librium, and I am sure that it was due to the relation

ships of my parents with us and between themselves. I

am totally convinced about that. The more we get this

kind of alive love among parents, the more it's possible

to help kids to grow up in good shape . Of course, this

kind of love has to be built. I don't believe in love as a

mere gift . That is, I had to love really Elza, and Elza

had to love really me, and we had to learn how to love

ourselves.

M Y L E S : You had to work at it .

PAU LO: We had to work on that. When we got married in

1 944, I remember the time we spent learning how to

go beyond the conflicts without denying them. That is,

how to learn from the conflicts, how to learn to become

ourselves in a different way. The question for those who

love themselves is not to collapse one into the other. It's

not the question. The question is how to continue to be

Reflections

myself and for Ella to be herself, differently each one

but at the same time being something that belonged to

us. In other words, it was possible for us to be artists

and creators of a common existence with respect for the

individuality and preferences of each person . I could

not impose on Ella my preference , my style , my way

of expressing my feelings . I was much more open than

Ella. Ella felt strongly about every thing, but it was

easier for me to express my feelings . I had to respect her

and she had to respect me. Do you see? It was a beauti

ful experience. I am sure that we have to learn together,

patiently, with humility, how to build our common exis

tence, because when we get married we have to create

a new world. It's no longer my world. It's no longer her

world . It is our world now that must be created, and

our world will become the world of the kids who come

into l ife because of our responsibili ty. Magdalena was

born 41 years ago because of a great love between me

and Ella. I learned when I was a child that a loving

space is indispensable for development of the children.

When I got married to Ella , I already knew about that ,

but I had to confirm with Ella that we would raise our

children this way. We fought a lot, not against ourselves,

but to create this kind of comprehension , in order for

the children to be themselves.

All these things are together, but methodologically

I am making them separate . The second influence, as I

said , was the harmony and the contradictions between

my father and my mother. Both of them were people

from the last century, and they were absolutely open in

the first part of the century. I was born in 1 92 1 , and

Reflections

the way they educated us was an anticipation from the

pedagogical point of view. They were beyond the much

more rigid patterns of living with kids. I had a very

warm and open atmosphere, which helped me. This is

the second element that helped me understand myself,

and look, I am giving emphasis to these elements and

not to some intellectual elements, which are also very

important for me.

The third element inside of this atmosphere was

the religious background , the Christian background.

Thinking about this element of my formation, I think

that it's interesting to underline two aspects. One is the

consistency that my parents demanded between pro

claiming faith and having consistent behavior vis-a.-vis

this faith . Because of this , I began also to demand con

sistency. I remember that when I was 6 years old , one

day I was talking with my father and my mother, and

I protested strongly against the way my grandmother

had treated a black woman at home-not with physical

violence , but with undoubtedly racial prejudice . I said

to my mother and to my father that I couldn't under

stand that , not maybe with the formal speech I am using

now, but I was underlining for me the impossibility of

being a Christian and at the same time discriminating

against another person for any reason. I was very angry.

I remember that my mother used to say to me, after

the death of my father, that my father always said to

her, " This boy will become a subversive." He didn't say

revolutionary. He used to say subversive. I liked it .

M Y L E S : That was real insight.

PAU L O : Yes. And there is another point concerning religion

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Reflections

that I have emphasized sometimes in some writings,

which was the tolerance of my father. Consistency and

tolerance as virtues. Why do I speak about tolerance? I

began to learn the meaning of this revolutionary virtue

from him when I was a child. Why? Because my mother

had a Catholic upbringing, and he was a spiritualist

from France. He had another understanding of Christ .

He did not choose to go to church. He had nothing to

do with the church, Catholic or Protestant . My mother

had a broad vision of the world . Philosophically, he had

another compassion, but he respected her totally. It's

very important, because as I told you they came from

last .century in a very male-dominated culture in which

the choices of men had to be imposed on the women.

Still today it is like this. Of course the young generation

in Brazil fortunately is fighting against that. He never

imposed his beliefs on my mother and on us, but we

discussed both of their ideas. This is very important to

underline, because sometimes the person who imposes

can have a kind of irresponsible behavior or attitude,

and for me it's very bad. In some instances, maybe not

imposing is worse than imposing, because if you impose

you c�m create reaction, but if you don't impose and

you do nothing, maybe you don't create any kind of re

action. I t's very bad from the point of view of formation .

In my father's case, no. He did not impose on us, but

he discussed with us his positions and then my mother's

positions, for example. When I remember how I grew

up in this atmosphere of respect, a presence which re

spected the other presence, I see it was important for

my development as an educator. It was not difficult for

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Reflections

me to understand that as an educator I should respect

the students , because I had been respected by my father

and my mother. It was not difficult, for example, to

know that in trying to teach adults to read and to write,

I should start from their words, because my father and

my mother taught me in the backyard of the house from

my words and not from their words. All these things

helped me a lot to theorize many of the things that I l ived-something that I would have to do later, and I

am still engaged in this process.

When I went first to meet with workers and peas

ants in Recife's slums, to teach them and to learn from

them, I have to confess that I did that pushed by my

Christian faith. I feel there are people who speak about

Christ with such a facility. There are people who say,

"Yesterday I met Christ on the corner." Oh, I don't meet

Christ every day. Only unless Christ is in lots of miser

able people, exploited, dominated people. But Christ

personally, himself, it's not so easy. I have some respect

for that, but I have to say that I went first as if I had

been sent . Look, I know that I had been sent, but Christ

did not do that personally with me. I don't want to say

that I have such prestige. I went because I believed in

what I heard and in what I studied . I could not be

still . I thought that I should do something, and what

happened is that the more I went to the slum areas,

the more I talked with the, people, the more I learned

from the people. I got the ' conviction that the people

were sending me to Marx. The people never did say,

"Paulo, please why do you not go to read Marx?" No.

The people never said that, but their reality said that to

245

Reflections

me. The misery of the reality. The tremendous domina

tion, the exploitation . Even the very magical religious

position of the people, understanding misery to be a

kind of test that God was imposing in order to know

whether they continued to be good sons-even this sent

me to Marx. That is, I had to come running into Marx.

Then I began to read Marx and to read about Marx,

and the more I did that the more I became convinced

that we really would have to change the structures of

reality, that we should become absolutely committed to

a global process of transformation . But what is inter

esting in my case-this is not the case of all the people

whose background is similar to mine-my "meetings"

with Marx never suggested to me to stop "meeting"

Christ. I never said to Marx : "Look, Marx, really Christ

was a baby. Christ was naive." And also I never said

to Christ, "Look, Marx was a materialistic and terrible

man." I always spoke to both of them in a very loving

way. You see, I feel comfortable in this position . Some

times people say to me that I am contradictory. My

answer is that I have the right to be contradictory, and

secondly, I don't consider myself contradictory in this.

No, I'm absolutely clear. It was very important for me,

and it has been and continues to be. If you ask me,

then, if I am a religious man, I say no, I'm not a reli

gious man. They understand religious as religion-like.

I would say that I am a man of faith . I take care with

this. I feel myself very comfortable with this.

Of course, I had my academic experiences . I had my

readings and I continued to have my readings . I learned

a lot from Marx, but I never accepted being taught

Reflections

by Marx without asking serious questions also. Critical

thinking is required. Thinking cannot be closed , put

inside of something. It cannot be immobil ized ; to do so

would be tremendously contradictory to what I think

and do.

And finally, to finish this confession, I would say

that, l ike Myles, the greatest source for all the things

together helping me really is and was the relationships

with the people.

M Y L E S : Love of people.

PAU L O : Loving people. I t's very dialectical. The first sources

I spoke about were important for me, but in going to

the slums and to the peasants I had to be consistent with

the reasons why I went there . I did not have any other

door but to love the people-that is, loving people, be

lieving in the people, but not in a naive way. To be

able to accept that all these things the people do are

good just because people are people? No, the people

also commit mistakes. I don't know many things, but

it's necessary to believe in the people. It's necessary to

laugh with the people because if we don't do that, we

cannot learn from the people, and in not learning from

the people we cannot teach them. This is why I feel so

linked to this experience, this work here in Highlander,

and also why I feel so comfortable talking with Myles .

I n the last analysis, I think that we are relatives, we are

sons of the same source.

M Y L E S : Yes that's right.

PAU L O : With difference that makes us better!

M Y L E S : I'm going to read a short little poem here. You can

figure out who wrote it . "Go to the people. Learn from

247

Reflections

them. Live with them. Love them. Start with what they

know. Build with what they have. But the best of leaders

when the job is done, when the task is accomplished,

the people will all say we have done it ourselves." Who

wrote that? Who could have written it?

T H I R D PART Y : You could have written it. Paulo could have

written it.

M Y LE S : It's taken a long time for people to come to these

ideas hasn't it? This was written in 604 B . C . by Lao Tzu.

Isn't it wonderful? That's a translation, of course, but

the ideas are exactly what Paulo and I 've been talking

about. That's wonderful.

Epilogue

MYLES : Well, you feel contented that we've done all we

can do?

PAU LO : Oh yes. Maybe I'm totally wrong, but I think that it

will be a beautiful book.

MYLES : Yes. I don't see any reason for having any more dis-

cussions.

PAU LO : It is more or less structured.

MYLES : Let's have a drink.

PAU LO : Yes.

Ca lldif Carawall

Index

Addams, J ane, xx Alinsky, Saul , " 5 Appalachia, xv, xxix, 2 24-2 2 5 ;

Cumberland Mountains, 2 2 9 ; people of, 54, 2 2 9-230

Araujo, Alvizio, 26, 59-60; as director of Osvaldo Cruz School, 26n

Araujo, Genove, 26 Arraes, Miguel, xxvi Authority, 1 28 ; authoritarian-

ism, 6 2 ; difference between authority and authoritarianism, 1 8 6- 1 88 ; legitimate authority, 1 87 ; of educator, 6 1 - 6 2 , 1 8 1

Autonomy, development of, I 89

Bible, 34-36, 48 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 42 B razil, xvii i , xxv, 4, 6, 83-84,

89, 9 1 -93, 20 1 , 207-2 1 4 ,

2 1 5 ; Lula, xxxii ; Sao Paulo, xv, xxxi , 2 1 2 ; Workers Party ( PT), xxxii, 2 1 6

Bumpass Cove (Tenn . ) , and toxics, 1 6g-1 70

Bureaucratization of the mind, 3 7 -38

Cabral, Amilcar, 1 33 - 1 34, 1 6 1 Caj amar, I nstitute of, 2 1 3 Cammera, Dom, 20g Cardenal, Fernando, 2 1 g Catholic Action movement,

xx, xxvi Charismatic leaders : dangers

of, 1 09 ; Malcolm X, 1 09, 1 1 2 ; M artin Luther King, 1 09, 1 1 1- 1 1 2 ; need for prophetical dimension, 1 1 2

Chicago, University of, xx, xxi, 39-40, 5 2 , 1 06. See also Horton, Myles

Chile, 2 1 0

Index

Christian base communities, 2 1 0-2 1 3 ; study circles, 2 1 1

Citizenship Schools (Johns Island), xxiv, xxix, 67-'76, 78-82 , 85-86, 89-92 ; and civil rights movement, 82, 1 1 3 ; formation of, 67-74 ; out-of-school learning, 202 ; as S C LC program, 75-76, 79; training of teachers, 78-80

Civil rights movement, xvi, xxv, 1 2 3 ; and Citizenship Schools, 76-82; role of Highlander, 1 1 3

Clark, Mike, 1 49 Clark, Septima, 67-76, 79. See

also Citizenship Schools Codification, 85, 87-8 9 Cuba, 208, 2 1 1 , 2 19, 2 2 1 Culture: "Circle of Culture,"

84 ; culture centers, xxvi; culture circles, xxvi ; going against traditions, 1 36-1 38; respect for, 1 3 1- 1 38;

and role playing, 1 66-1 67; spirit of, 1 3 1 ; weakness Of, 1 34

Cumberland College, xx, 1 4 , 38, 2 3 1

Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 28-29. 38-'-39. See also Horton, Myles

Danish Folk Schools, xxi, 2 1 , 5 1 , 52, 1 54 ; Bishop Grundtvig, xxi,

·2 1 n ; Horton

article, 98 Democracy: how to make

work, 1 4 1 - 1 43 ; thrQugh education, 1 45�1 46, 1.67

Dombrowski, Jim, 4 1

Eastland, James, xxviii Education : adult education, 47,

53, 1 83, 199; being progres-

sive, 225-2 26; "bootleg" education, 205 ; characteristics of good education, "1 77-1 78; characteristics Of good school, 1 72 ; content of, and students, 1 55.,- 1 59; definition of, 1 1 6 ; democratic education, xxv; to denounc� the domillant ideology, 1 1 8; differing from organizing, 1 1 5, 1 2 7; etymology of, 1 87; experiential education, 202 ; experimental colleges, 204 ; holistic approach, 1 68- 1 69; importance of atmosphere. 76; importance of experience, 78; as inseparable from teaching • . 1 88; and liberation. xxx-xxxi; limits of, 95; out-of-school education. 20 I ; participatory research, 1 20; as political. 199; as politiCal question. 1 45 ; popular education, 1 6 1 ; popular education in Nicaragua. 82 ; as process, 1 07 ; questioning and idea.s. 1 4 7- 1 48; to reproduce class, 2 1 3 ; and revolution. 2 19. 2 2 2 ; as a right, 2 1 5 ; role in mobilizing and .organizing, i 1 7; role of stud�nt, 1 45; school as social and historical institution. 220; vs. schooling, 1 82- 1 84.; as s�perstructure, 1 1 8; vs. teaching. 62-63

Educatc;>r: basic task of, 66; difficulty and joy of, 1 70-1 72 ; fears of. 21 7-2 1 8, 220; formation of, 220-22 1 ; importance of political clarity. 1 0 1 ; qualities and virtues of, 1 58- 1 59. 191 , 1 95 ; respect for knowledge

Index

of (he people. 101 ; role of. 1 25. 1 58- 1 59. 1 77. 1 80; security of. 190; techniques of intervention. 1 46

Experience: authentic vs. synthetic. 1 68 ; importance of. in preparing teachers. 78; the people's el!.periences. 1 49. 1 67 - 1 68; relationship with knowledge. 1 5 1 - 1 53 ; a s social experience. xvi. 9- 10; as source of answers. 1 74 ; of student. 1 56-1 58. 1 62

Experts: dealing with. 1 65-1 66; role of. 1 62-1 63 ; use of expert knowledge. 1 29';"' 1 3 1

Fanon. Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. 36

Forma�ao. process of. 3 1 Freire, Anita (Anna Maria

Araujo). xxi. xxxii-xxxiii. XXXIV

Freire. Christina. 1 39 Freire. Elza (Elza Maria Costa

de Oliveira). xxi. xxx. 3-

4. 62-63 . 65. 83, 1 38, 1 4 1 . 2 15. 241-242

Freire, Magdalena, 64.- 242 Freire, Paulo : attacks on. xxvii

xxviii ; background and early childhood. xix. 239-2 4 1 ; childhood experiences. 24-25. 56-58; Depression era. 239-240; influenced by parents, 24-27; influenced by readings. 36; Movimento de Cultura Popular (MCP). xxii. xxvi ; patents of. xix; parenting. 1 38- 1 39; Pedagogy of the OfJIwessed. xxix . 36-37 . 2 1 1 ; philosophi-cal background. 2 39-247; teaching secondary school.

253

60-63; as young adult. 58-60

Giroux. Henry. xxxi. 23 Gramsci. Antonio. 23. 32. 36 Griffin. Marvin. xxviii Guevara. Cht\ 1 77

Highlander Folk School. xv

xvii . xxii-xxiv. xxv. xxviii. 1 83 , 2 3 1

Highlander Research and Education Center: xxviii-xxix. 6. 1 0. 2 2 . 40-45. 54�55. 67. 72�5, 94. 99- I OO. 1 1 3� 1 1 4, 1 1 5- 1 1 7 . 1 2 3-1 25. 1 34 - 1 36• 1 53-154. 1 55 . 1 55n• 1 56• 1 63 . 1 74-1 76. 1 78-1 79. 1 82-1 86. 205. 2 25. 247 ; approacb to education. 199-204; as different from other organizations. 1 24 ; early beginnings, 40-44; history of. 2 36-239; philosophy of. 164; purpose of. 1 5h 1 52. See also Citizenship Schools; Civil rights movement; Labor movement

Horton, Aimee Isgrig. xxi. xxxiv

HortOn; Charis. 1 40- 1 4 1 . 1 83. 191-192

Horton . Delmas. 228 Horton. Myles: basis of interest

in education. xix. 1 3 ; birthplace, 1 2 ; church work. 48; college experiences. 38-40; Cumberland Presbyterian Church, 28-29; as director of Highlander. 1 00; early education. 1 4 ; early years. 2 8-30; influenced by the church. 28-30; influenced by family. 1 5- 1 8 ; influenced by Niebuhr, 1 03 ; influ-

Index

Horton , Myles (cant. ) enced by read ings, 34 -36 ;

McCarthy era , xvi, xxviii, 205 ; Ozone, 48-5 1 ; parenting, xviii-xix, 1 39- 1 4 1 ; parents of, 1 3 ; religious influences, 28, 33; vision and strategy, 1 96- 1 97

Horton, Thorsten, 1 39- 1 4 1 , 1 83 , 1 9 1 - 1 9 2

Horton, Zilphia (Zilphia Mae johnson) , xx, 4 1 n, 1 40, 1 66, 1 92

Humanity: of charismatic leaders, I I I ; meaning Of, 1 00

I deas : acceptance by the people, 1 0 7 ; exposure to, 1 07 ; imposing on others, 1 05, 1 06- 1 07

Ill iteracy : as justification for racial discrimination (U.S.) , 84; as justification for social-class discrimination (Brazil) , 84

jenkins, Esau, xxiv, 67-'76, 82, 91 . See also Citizenship Schools

justus, May, 1 83 - 1 84

King, Martin Luther, xxiv, xxviii, 75, 1 1 4 ; as charismatic leader, 1 09, 1 1 2

Knowledge (knowing) : from books and conversation, 99; as dialectical, 1 0 1 ; discovering the need for, 66; as historical, 1 93- 1 94 ; importance of, 57 ; need for practice, 9 8 ; of the people, 65, 9 8 , 1 50 ; use and sharing of, 235. See also Education; Educator

2 54

Labor movement, 1 1 0, 1 1 4 , 1 2 3 ; in Brazil, xxv-xxvi; industrial union movement , 1 1 0; involvement with Highlander, 1 63-1 6 9 ; labor education, xxiv, 34; workers' education in Brazil, 63, 65

Lao Tzu, 248 Leadership: characteristics of,

1 85 ; role of, 1 8 1 - 1 82 Learning: from each other,

49, 5 5 ; from experience and reading, 40-4 1 ; importance of atmosphere, 92-93 ; from the people, 46-47 ; process of, 40-4 1 ; resulting from mobilizing and organizing, 1 1 7

Lewis, Helen , 1 79 Lindeman, Eduard, 5 3 ; The

Meaning of Adult Education, 53n

Literacy : group vs. individualistic approach, 91-92 ; a�

means of personal identity, 90; national literacy campaigns, 93-94; National Literacy Program (Plan), xxii, xxvii; political aspects , 9 1 ; popular education, xxii

Lynd, Robert, 1 0- 1 1

Machado, Antonio, 6n Malcolm X, as charismatic

leader, 109- 1 1 2 Marx, Karl, 1 9 1 ; as influence

on Freire, 245-246; Marxism as means to analyze society, 35-36, 1 0 2 , 2 3 2 . See also Horton, Myles

Memmi, Albert, The Colonizer and the Colonized, 36

Merrifield, juliet, 1 70 Mobilizing, 1 1 0; as differing

from organizing, 1 1 7 ; as

Index

educational process, 1 1 7-1 1 8 ; used to learn from the people, 1 2 2

Morris, Aldon, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, xxv

National Labor Relations Board , 165

Neutrality : as immoral act, 1 02- 1 05 ; people or institutions claiming to be neutral, 1 33, 1 85- 1 86 ; pertaining to education, 64, 1 04, 1 80 ; pertaining t o knowing, 23 . See also Ideas

Nicaragua, 208, 2 1 6-2 26; popular education programs, 1 3 , 2 2 3-2 2 5 ; revolution, 77, 2 1 6-2 1 7

Niebuhr, Reinhold, xx, xxiii, 4 2 ; Moral Man in Immoral Society, 1 03

Nyerere, Julius, 2 1 g

Occupational health movement, 1 2 8

Oldendorf, Sandra B renneman, 8gn

Organizations: for changing the system, 1 85 ; as first step toward social movement, 1 24

Organizing: characteristics of organizer, 1 24 - 1 26; differing from education, 1 1 5, l l g, 1 2 7 ; differing from mobilizing, 1 1 7 ; as educational process, 1 1 7-I I g, 1 2 1 ; used to disempower, 1 20

Ozone ( Tenn.) , 48-5 1 , 55. See also Horton, Myles

Parks, Rosa, xxiv, 1 5 3 Participatory research: as

255

education, 1 20 ; i n organizing, 1 2 2

Phenix, Lucy Massie, You Got to Move, 1 70n

Power: of adult society, 1 84 ; i n choosing educational program, 1 07 - 1 O 9 ; and cooptation , 206; of the group, 1 66- 1 67 ; and participation of the masses, 97 ; in process of mobilizing, l l O; and science, 1 05

Presbyterian Sunday School B oard, 47

Reading, 30-3 7 ; books as theoretical instruments, 3 1 ; as research, 3 7 ; of a text, 37, 1 58 ; of text vs. content, 3 1 -3 2

Recife ( B razil), xv, xvii, xxvi, 2 5-26, 65, 67 , 1 50, 20g, 240, 245; literacy program, 7 7 -78, 8 2-84, 87-89, g2-93 ; workers' education, 65· See also Freire, Paulo

Recife, University of, xx, xxii Rel igion : influences, xx, 243-

246; interaction with social action, 243

Respect : as basis of Citizenship Schools, 6g-70; for knowledge of the people, 10 I ; for people, 66; for students, 6 1

Robinson, Bernice, 7 1 -76, 78-8 2 , 85-86, 8g-g 1 , 1 56. See also Citizenship Schools

Romasco, Ann, 79

Savannah (Tenn. ) , 1 2 , 1 8 , 20 Science: and power, 1 05 ; social

dimension of, 1 05 ; virtues of beauty and simplicity, 3 2

Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, 34-35. See also Horton, Myles

Index

Social change: radical challenge for action, 94; radical transformation of society as a process, 2 1 6; relationship to learning, 1 0 2 ; transition from old to new society, 2 1 8 ; use of time, 2 2 2

Social equality, 1 34 South (U.S.), xvii-xxiv, 44, 67,

1 34, 1 53 - 1 54, 2 3 1 , 236 Southern Christian Leadership

Conference, role in Citizenship Schools, xxv, xxix, 75-76. See also Citizenship Schools

Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, 1 1 3

Teaching, 1 6 0 ; clarifying role of teacher, 1 04, 1 4 2 ; and discovery, 193; contents of, in historical and social context, 1 08; vs. education, 62-63 ; fundamental role of teacher, 2 3 ; as illseparable from educating, 1 88 ; knowing the issues being taught, 59; "political clarity," 9 1 ; relationship between teaching, giving knowledge, and learning knowledge, 1 5 1 ; in

social context, 1 04 - 1 05 . See also Education; Educator; KtJowledge

Theory: as dialectical, 1 0 1 ; importance of, 1 00; resulting from action and reflection, 239

Thinking: critically, 1 72� 1 74 ; and decision making, 1 64 ; outside conventional frameworks, 44-45

Thompson, John, 4 1 Thrasher, Sue, 9 1 Tjerandsen, Carl, Education for

Citiunship: A FoUflll4tion's Experience, 8 2 n

U N ESCO, evaluating adult literacy, 77

Union Theological Seminary, XX, 42

Vygotsky, Lev, Thought and Language, 36

West, Don, xxii Witnesses for Peace, 2 23-2 2 4

Young, Andrew, .75-'16, 1 1 3 . See also Citizenship Schools

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Freire and Horton - We Make the Road by Walking - Conversations on Education and Social Change

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